A Life Well Lived
by roxiejh
Summary: The life he never had. Ten/Rose. SPOILERS for season four - do not read if avoiding.
1. One

**Title**: A Life Well Lived  
**Rating**: PG-15  
**Pairing/Characters**: Ten/Rose, Jackie, Pete, various others.  
**WARNING**: **Spoilers, there are spoilers in this story, as in, if you haven't seen season four, particularly the last episode, you really don't want to be reading this.**  
**Summary**: The life he never had.  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine, borrowing. Will put them back (relatively) unharmed.  
**Excerpt**: _"I'm sorry," he says quietly from her side._

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**A Life Well Lived**  
One

His hand feels lukewarm in hers.

It's strange, different, but maybe it's been too long since she's held his hand like this. It's certainly very different to the last time they said goodbye.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly from her side.

And it's in that moment, that single moment, that her heart breaks; but in the good way, because in the same moment it heals more than it ever could have without him. She turns and flings her arms around his neck and she's crying, for the him she has but doesn't, and his arms are around her, holding her, protecting her like all the times she imagined, and he smells enough like him – like his warmth – that maybe, maybe, she can believe it.

She wants to tell him don't be, it's all right, it doesn't matter, she loves him – and she does, sort of, or she will, and can – but the words don't come because there _are_ no words, everything she's been through in the last few hours have made her incapable of processing... everything. He's here. He's here, and she's here, and they can have forever. Which is terrifying, oh so terrifying, but with him by her side maybe it won't be so bad.

She pulls back, her hair flying in the wind, and she reaches to tuck it behind her ears, out of her face – but he gets there first. She laughs through tears as he carefully folds strands away, looking at her in the soft, compassionate way that's so very Doctor.

She opens her mouth to say something, but laughs breathlessly instead, still unable to fathom it.

He smiles bittersweetly and nods in agreement, his eyes red and raw.

Then suddenly they're kissing again, like they've been doing it for years; his mouth on hers, finding her in the darkness, and she kisses back as he holds her, desperately. It's perfect, really, stuck on this beach in the middle of Norway, the waves rolling on the –

Wait.

She pulls back, and the Doctor (version 2.0, naturally) looks at her questioningly.

She licks her lips, swallows. Then, finally, she speaks.

"Norway."

He frowns, evidently not understanding. "Yes."

"_Norway_," she insists.

"Bad Wolf Bay," he clarifies in that cocky way he does, in the way she's missed over the years. "Just like last time."

She shakes her head, then glances over to her mum, who – perhaps tactfully – has her back turned, gazing out to the sea. She looks back.

"Not like last time. Last time we had a car. A way to get home?"

She watches almost in amusement as the penny drops, and an almost terror twists his features. "Oh, no," he says, and for the first time she notices an odd London-esque accent in his voice, stronger than before. "Oh, no. No no no. You're not – you're not telling me we're stuck on a beach in Norway. In _Norway_."

She nods and bites down on her lip. "Yup."

"Fantastic." It's sarcasm of course, and he's looking up to the sky with a bitter laugh, but somehow, she can't help but smile. "Just like me, I suppose. Did you know, I dropped Sarah Jane off in Crodyon! The first time. Uh, long story – Jackie?"

Jackie turns, and rolls her eyes. "Finally," she complains mockingly, stalking across the sand towards them, her shoes leaving deep footprints in the sand. "Thought I'd have to find my own way back, the rate you two were at it."

Rose can feel her blush burning her cheeks, but it's almost welcome in this cold air. She quickly changes the subject.

"Yeah, Mum, about... finding a way back..."

She trails off, and she knows that's enough for her mum, who turns – wide-eyed and accusingly – towards the Doctor.

"You've stranded us here!" she says loudly, glaring, and the Doctor-who-is-but-isn't takes a small step back and holds Rose's hand tightly.

"Wasn't me!" he protests quickly, raising his other hand in defence, and Rose notices his voice still rises when he's cornered, just like it always used to. "I mean, I suppose it was, _technically_, but it was a me that I'm not, so... not my fault."

Jackie gives him a withering look then turns to her daughter. "You got your mobile, sweetheart?"

Rose frowns slightly. "No. Dad said we weren't to have any electronic devices when using the jumpers."

"Well, it's a good thing I broke that rule, then, isn't it?" her mum says slyly, and she reaches into her coat pocket, pulling out a beaten, but working, mobile phone.

She stares at her in astonished disbelief. "Mum, you could have blown a hole in the universe!"

"I didn't, though, did I? And now I can just ring your father and we can get home, so not a word, all right?"

She's given a mock disapproving look, and then her mum is dialling and walking away as she talks to Pete.

Rose turns back to the Doctor and finds him looking right at her, like he hasn't taken his eyes off her for one moment. It's intimidating, nearly, but because it's _him_ she doesn't mind so much.

"Hi," she says laughingly, nervousness bubbling up in her like it used to do when she was nineteen and so very naive.

"Hello," he grins back softly, tipping his head to one side, and she can see the whole universe shining in his eyes.

"I can't believe you're..." She can't finish the sentence, and he reaches down to her other hand, encasing it in his.

"I know," he whispers softly. "It's a bit... I mean, me, with one heart. Like I was... made for you."

His voice sounds like it's breaking, like he's been holding back emotions for years, and Rose gets such the want – and the need – to throw herself into his arms and bury herself within him that if they weren't standing in the middle of the beach, with the wind kicking around them like an angry child, she probably would. But they're not alone, and it's wrong, it's not really even him, and part of her still can't let that go.

"Okay," Jackie says, walking back to him, and Rose reaches up with her sleeve to wipe away a stray tear. Finally, her hands fall away from the Doctor's.

"He's coming?" she asks with a hard sniff, and Jackie nods, dubiously looking between the two of them. Rose can feel the Doctor's eyes on her, almost burning into her skin, but she can't let it get to her. Not yet. She continues to look at her mum. "What did he say?"

"Seemed a bit surprised. But he'll be here in an hour or so with the helicopter, and then we'll have to explain everything to him."

Rose nods and stares out to the sea, remembering the last time she was here. She remembers the hours she spent mourning, pining, growing cold and laying everything down to rest. She shivers involuntarily.

There's warmth on the shoulder and she turns slightly, finds the Doctor's hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder.

"I'm – "

"Don't," she cuts off, and out of the corner of her eye she sees him nod, wet his lips with tongue. His hand falls from her shoulder, but brushes her fingers on its descent; she can't help the smile.

Suddenly he speaks, and she can hear the frown in his voice; it makes her want to laugh. "...Since when did you have a helicopter?"

-I-

They're in the back, a four-seater, while the pilot takes them home.

"Slightly different from last time," Pete jokes wryly into the empty, heavy silence, and after meeting eyes with the Doctor, he swiftly drops his gaze to the floor.

The Doctor shifts in the small seat, turning to Rose. "I never asked..." he admits quietly, and there's regret in his voice. "About afterwards. How long has it been?"

Rose doesn't answer him, just remains staring out of the window at the landscapes flashing by, but her fingers curl tighter around his.

"Two and a half years," Pete answers on her behalf, and the Doctor looks up to a rueful smile. "Rose is almost twenty three."

"Two," she corrects quietly. She turns, the fabric of her jacket rustling against the chair. "Twenty-two. The Doctor and I... missed a year."

"Oh, and don't I remember that like it was yesterday," Jackie adds cuttingly, but there's a certain fondness in her voice now as she remembers the old him, the man he used to be. "Had me worried sick for a whole year! She just disappeared, right off the face of the Earth, not a clue where she was. Mickey was taken in for questioning, everyone thought he'd murdered her."

"I said _sorry_," the Doctor pointed out reasonably, "and I did save your measly planet from being taken over by Slitheen."

"Your measly planet, now," Rose laughs from his side, and he looks at her again. She's smiling that smile, the one where her tongue rests between her teeth and youth sparkles in her eyes, and he wonders why he never told her he loved her before.

Then he shakes himself slightly. "I suppose it is," he replies, a little distantly, suddenly getting a very far-away feeling and a strange heaviness in his heart (singular, he's going to have to get used to that).

Rose squeezes his hand. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yes. Perfect. Wonderful. Fine. And all other... synonyms."

He drops his gaze to the floor, to the strange rubber rug that's almost like a grille floor, and he tries not think about another kind of grille floor he'll never see again. It hurts, sort of, except that he knows the other him is tucked safely away in his pocket of time and spice with his oldest friend, so at least someone is enjoying her light and life. In her place, he has Rose. It isn't so bad.

The atmosphere between the four of them becomes heavy again, pulled tightly from all corners like an elastic band that's about to snap. Jackie didn't tell Pete about the swap. Mickey left, the Doctor returned in his place, and it's only been explained through surprised glances and furtive murmurs. It'll be a long trip back.

-I-

They touchdown at Torchwood, and he can't help the tenseness that rises in his shoulders, or the way his breath catches in his chest. He hasn't been here since...

Rose tugs on his hand as they climb out of the helicopter, and she gives him a reassuring smile when he looks at her. He's grateful. He can see in her eyes she's about as sure of this as he is, and that includes the uncertainties here and there.

There's a car waiting for them downstairs, but Rose surprises him when she says to her parents that they'll come home later. Jackie takes her to one side, has a quiet word, hugs her, then climbs into the car with Pete and they're left on their own.

There's a fountain in the courtyard and the water sparkles in the fading sunlight. His breath appears as mist in the air around him. He thinks it must be February, maybe early March. He has no idea what year. He doesn't have much of an idea about anything any more, but he swallows down the fear because he's been allowed to have the one thing he never thought he could. A human life.

"Half human," he murmurs as he watches the water trickle from the mouth of a mermaid down into the pool below.

Rose comes up beside him and slips her hand into his. "Yeah," she agrees quietly, and they stand there together for a good five minutes, the silence comfortable but new.

The Doctor blinks, the liquid in front of him suddenly turning red and thick, like gushing from a wound, and he breaths sharply and looks away. It's just water in reality, of course, but...

"You're still you," Rose reminds him and he nods mutely, wondering whether she's saying it to convince herself or him.

"Yes."

There's another pause as he feels her considering him, really looking at him, but he continues to stare at the stony floor, trying to push images and guilt out of his mind. He's so ecstatic to have this chance, but there's a bitter aftertaste of the fact that it's not really real. He's a clone, not an original.

"...The blue's new."

He looks up and Rose is smiling, sadly, and he chuckles softly lets himself be drawn back to her and her light because it's been years since he's seen her and doesn't she just look every image of beauty she always used to.

"You don't like it?" he guesses, stepping in front of her as he trails a hand down her arm. It's an amazing feeling, this new freedom he's found from her.

She glances up to him, teasing in her eyes. "I never said that."

He hesitates, meeting her gaze, then falters. He drops his gaze with his hand. "I wore it a lot. In the years after I... after... well... I met Martha in it," he finishes lamely, looking up again with a brief attempt at humour.

"Yeah?" She's smiling, interested, she wants to know. He grins.

"Yeah. Well. Sort of. Actually, I was in pyjamas when I first met her, but I was John Smith then. As the Doctor, it was definitely the blue."

Gauging her reaction amuses him, and if anything makes him love her more. She seems jealous – he was always good at reading her – but gently, in the 'I'm happy for you' way, and he finds himself laughing again.

"I'll have to tell you about her, one day," he concedes, and he can't help but reach for her fingers again. He longs for their feel, the feel that fits this body like she was made for it and he smiles sorrowfully when he remembers this is the only body he'll have no. No regeneration. Not for this version.

"There's a lot to catch you up on, too," Rose says, her hand tightening, her shoulder bumping with his as she looks up to him. "Tony, for one. He'd quite like to meet you."

He frowns, surprised. "Your little brother?"

"Yeah. Okay, so he's only two, but I'm sure with all the stories we told about you he'd love to meet you."

There's a certain fondness that blooms in his heart, then, to think that they never gave up hope, never gave up loving him.

"Thank you." He smiles, and she does too, nodding her understanding. "Tony Tyler," he quotes, rolling the name off his tongue like a sweet. "Better than Doctor Tyler I suppose, that would have been rubbish, but still, hell of a mouthful."

Rose laughs, and it sounds so full and fresh and just how he used to remember that he wants to capture it in his palm and keep it, forever.

"Definitely you," she jokes, her eyes twinkling up at him. "No one I know is that rude."

"Oi!" he protests, feigning hurt. "Years you and I have spent apart, years, and all you do after I tell you I love you is insult me. Well, Rose Tyler, that's just what I am. Insulted."

He breaks off from her hold and crosses his arms over his chest to make his point, but the magic is broken by Rose standing there smirking at him. Then she holds out her hand and he drops his arms willingly, a strange ache for her appearing freely in his heart and tugging him towards her.

"Let's go home," she requests, almost pleadingly.

He takes a step forward, accepts her hand. "Rose. I already am."

**End this part**


	2. Two

**Author's Note**: Wow! That was a lot of responses for that first chapter, way more than I was expecting. Thank you, everyone, you really put a huge smile on my face :) I hope this second chapter lives up to the first. Thank you.

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**A Life Well Lived**  
Two

She decides they should go to her flat first, before going on to see Jackie and Pete. They're walking down the pavement hand in hand, their shadows extending in the dwindling sunlight. They're both quiet, thoughtful; it's been a rough day for them both.

She can't quite let go of the nagging feeling that tells her this still isn't right, that she's living in some sort of dream manipulated by her subconscious, rather than the real world. She glances to the Doctor, all blue suit and thoughtful eyes, and she remembers that there's another version – a real version – out there on his own, without her.

He's not really on his own, of course, he has Donna, and Rose knows that right now there's no one else better for him; but that doesn't stop the pang for him she'll never quite escape.

They don't speak the whole way there, and by the time she's fitting her key in the lock of her front door, the air has already gone stale between them. She meets his eye briefly and finds an uncanny emptiness in his returned gaze. The sound of the unlocking door is hollow, and echoes all the way through the flat. It's just how she left it, messy but homely, with a strange musty smell clinging to the walls.

She never thought she'd be back to stay.

"Tea?" she says, far too easily, as she leads him into the living room with large fabric chairs and blue wallpaper. "Or are you a coffee man now?"

She turns to find him standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame with his arms folded and his ankles crossed. It's a pose she hasn't seen from him in quite a few years, and he was a different man back then.

"Rose," he says softly, and the way he whispers still makes her shiver. She tilts her chin upwards, looking him in the eye.

"I'm all right," she insists.

"No, you're not."

He uncrosses his arms and walks towards her, something quiet and determined in his deliberated steps. He's swirling, she can see it, he's a tempest that needs to be calmed, but she's not sure she has the strength to do it a second time. Maybe she's the one who needs calming.

He stops just a few inches from her, his eyes warm but hard, deep brown and inviting. His hair is the same, chestnut and untameable, and his fringe falls just past his forehead, casting slight shadows on his face. There's even stubble in the hollows of his cheekbones, like he hasn't shaved for a day or so, despite the fact he's technically no more than a few hours old. And there's wisdom in those eyes of his, the same, aching wisdom that tells her he's lived through every one of those nine hundred years.

"Do you remember when we said goodbye?" he asks, and his voice is grave with sorrow. She swallows, doesn't want this now, it's been too long a day. But she nods nonetheless, pushing away the tears like all the times she learned to do.

"The last time," he continues, and his fingers find the sleeve of the jacket she's wearing, almost leathery in feel but not quite. "When you were stranded and there was nothing, _nothing_, I could do to save you."

She nods, remembering the bitterness that had come with the realisation that the universe was always cruel. "Course I do. Thought about it every day."

"Do you know what I did?"

She looks up into dark, honest eyes – there's no trace of humour on his face now, there's barely a trace of anything. It's like he locked eyes with Medusa and his whole body turned to stone.

Wordlessly, she shakes her head, suddenly very aware of how close he is to her, what his body feels like when it's almost but not quite touching hers.

"After you'd nearly been pulled into the void... I had nothing, Rose. Literally, nothing. I spent a month without sleep going through every resource in the TARDIS I had. I sat for hours in the library, in my room, in the workshop, thinking and building components for a way to get to you without having the whole thing collapse. The world outside those wooden doors ceased to exist. But I still couldn't do it. I couldn't save you. Have you any idea how frustrating that was?"

She wants to speak, wants to shout, wants to tell him that of course she knows how that feels – she spent years looking for ways to get back to him, every test failing, every attempt a disaster. She knows what it's like to want to give up.

But he's talking again before she can, his fingers tickling her hand, exciting the invisible hairs at her wrist and sending small shivers all the way up her arm.

"I had to let you go," he muttered, and she can hear the bitterness he still has about that, about deciding he had to go on. "When I found you on Bad Wolf Bay, when I came across that crack in the universe... It was an accident. I stumbled across it and I knew I wasn't going to waste my only chance to see you again, to... to tell you... what I couldn't. I wanted to give you so much, Rose, I wanted to give you the life you deserved. And I couldn't even touch you."

She's crying now, the tears warm in her eyes before they trickle down her cheeks.

"You gave me that life," she replies steadily, feeling the weight in her chest she always hoped she'd escaped. "When I was with you, when we were..."

"I know." He grabs her hand, surprising her with the firmness of his grip, and she looks up through a haze of watery tears into a determined strong face, the face of a man who loves her. "I know, Rose. You gave me that life too, you gave me what I needed. You saw the terrible things I could do and you... loved me anyway. Do you know how incredible that is? Because I do. I know what it's like to look at someone and love them no matter what they do, to forgive them their mistakes and their stupidities. So I'm asking you. Now."

He stops and just stands there, looking down at her, and she wonders if he's going to lean in and kiss her again and whether she has the strength to stop him. Because this, it's him and she wants him so very badly, but at the same time it's not and she's tired of feeling like the universe is trying to cheat her.

She realises he's not going to continue unless she says something, anything, so she blinks through her tears and fights on. "What are you asking me?" she says obediently, quietly, swallowing down the urge to kiss him and throw him out of her flat all at once.

There's a beat of silence as his eyes search hers, eyes that look like the stars have been plucked from the sky and given a new home.

Softly, so softly she almost doesn't hear him, he pleads, "Forgive me."

The words pierce her like he's just stuck a sword through her chest. It's the Doctor, her Doctor, asking her to forgive him, the one thing she always thought she could do.

"I..." She's not sure she has the words.

He nods and laughs, somewhere torn between bitter and amused, and he turns to stare out of her window, at the street lamps that have started to flicker on in the dusk.

"I'm stupid," he admits with a sense of irony, and when he looks back to her it's with a strange smile that makes her wonder if he's really so different after all. She twitches their hands slightly, the hands that are still joined. "I'm so stupid, Rose. Oh, I'm intelligent, yes. I'm bright, I pick things up incredibly quickly... but I'm actually very stupid. I'd make a rubbish human. Which, considering the circumstances, is probably not the best place to start, but... You know it, don't you? You know how so very stupid I can be?"

He's trying to share a joke with her, trying to set some sense of normality to it all, which is not like him at all, but it's very like them and the way they used to be.

She laughs through her nose and nods, accepting what he's trying to say to her.

"You're just so..." she starts and frowns up at him slightly in apology. She knows he understands.

"You are, too," he says, surprising her. "It's been a while. You've changed, Rose Tyler. This," he tugs on the sleeve of her jacket, then flicks his eyes up to hers through his fringe, "is new. You wouldn't have worn this before."

"What's wrong with it?" she asks self consciously, because maybe she did change her wardrobe style while she was here, but by the look of him, so did he.

He laughs, and it's teasing, almost light, and she's thankful for that. "Nothing," he says gently, kindly, "it's just not my Rose. Just like, I know, I'm not your Doctor."

"Yes you are," she counters almost instantly, and she can see the surprise on his face as his sentence fails. She's not even sure where the words came from or how she had the strength to say them so resolutely, but they're out in the open now, her heart has spoken. "You're him," she says again, continuing when he seems unable to. "Everything we did, everything we were... everything except the last few hours is the same, right? You're... you're the same?"

She feels herself breaking again and she's so glad when he steps forward, pulls her into a hug, gives her exactly what she needs.

He blows out a breath into her hair and it's warm on her ear. It makes her hold him tighter, and this is something she never thought she'd be doing, standing in the middle of her flat hugging the Doctor.

"This isn't easy," he says quietly, and she closes her eyes.

"No," she agrees.

"I thought it would be. But yes. I am the same. Remember New Earth? I remember New Earth."

She pulls back slightly, but just enough to look at him. Almost on instinct, his hands settle at her waist and hers on his shoulders, like they've been doing this for years.

"I loved you then just as I love you now. Nothing has changed that, Rose." He reaches up to cup her cheek and brushes a thumb across the tender skin there. "And nothing ever will. There's not much I can promise you. But I can give you now what I couldn't give you then, what I could never give you through all the time we were together. I can stay. I can promise you a happy ending and I can tell you that that's the most terrifying thing I've ever done."

She blinks up at him, awe for him settling around her heart like a child seeing stars for the first time. Memories of their life together, the life they had, flash into her mind, glimpses of the life she'll never have again.

"No more stars," she says quietly, and she stretches her thumb to feel the line of stubble cascading down his jawline.

His eyes fix on hers. "No."

"No more travelling," she continues, shifting her footing, and his hands tighten on her waist and neck.

"No."

"No more running away."

He shakes his head, and suddenly she knows what comes next; after all this time it's what she wants most in the world.

He dips his head and presses a kiss to her lips, shyly at first, like he still isn't sure of the dos and don'ts, but as his hand drifts to the small of her back and her fingers curl into his shoulders and hair, he gets stronger. Her mouth is open to him before she realises and their tongues sing to each other, telling each other things they can't say in words. It's hungry and desperate and everything she's craved from him for four years, maybe more, and as his tongue slides along hers, her skin feels like it's bursting into flames.

Eventually they part, and he rests his forehead against hers, his eyes closed and his breath heavy and hot.

"I've given up a lot to be with you, Rose," he murmurs in the growing darkness of her flat.

"So have I," she reminds, and she feels him nod against her.

"Let me show you I'm the same man I always was."

She pauses, the taste of his kiss still tingling on her lips. She lets the hand that's on his shoulder drift down his body and rest above his chest, feeling for the constant rhythm there.

"One heart," she whispers.

"Yes."

Rose drops her hand, considering everything he's trying to put out in front of her. She can't decide whether she loves him or hates him – the _him_ him, not the him who's standing in front of her now – for leaving her with this choice that isn't. Because she really doesn't have a choice, she can't cut this man out of her life, especially when to all intents and purposes he's the man she's always wanted. She can see in his eyes he knows he's not the man she loves, but she knows he is a man she _can_ love, and will love. When the time comes.

"We should... start again," she suggests, and she's not surprised when he backs off her, lifts his head away from hers and takes a step or two away.

"Right," he agrees, nodding, but everything in his body language tells her she's said the wrong thing, and she wishes that at this moment he could be the Doctor, not the Doctor-who-needs-to-be-fixed. And suddenly anger flares, anger and resentment, because how dare he do this to her, either of him? How dare the Doctor just assume this was what she wanted

"So, I'm just supposed to act like nothing's happened, is that it?" she challenges him with ire, glaring at him. "Like you've just popped back into my life with no consequences and I'm supposed to like it or lump it, yeah?"

He looks up sharply, his mouth thin. "What, Rose, did I ever say that?" he accuses back, and she can see his shoulders tense. "I don't want anything from you, Rose, nothing you can't give. I don't want to... to sit around in a house with a white picket fence and carpets while our children play in the back garden. I don't want to have to get up and go to work, or go shopping, or all the... the boring, human things that people do. I don't want that! Don't you understand? I want you, that's all I want, that's all I've ever wanted!"

He's shouting now and she can see the rage firing up in his eyes like he's trying to shoot her down. She's very rarely heard him shout like this – they used to argue more in his older incarnation, and this is definitely something new.

She falls quiet, not wanting to think about anything she has to do next.

He lowers his head, running his fingers tiredly across his eyes. "I'm sorry," he breathes wearily from behind his hand. "I'm sorry I'm trapped here, and I'm sorry you're stuck here too."

"Well..." Rose starts, shrugging slightly, and she takes a step towards him. He's right, he's given up a lot to be with her, it's not his fault. She can't blame him for someone else's mistake. He looks up. "Stuck with you – that's not so bad."

The expression he's giving her, like his heart is breaking and he's hiding it everywhere except for his eyes, almost breaks her, but she stays strong. She raises her eyebrows slightly, waiting for him to take his cue of words that are years old.

"Yeah?" he asks quietly, and he looks like he's going to take her hand, but he doesn't.

"Yes," Rose says, and she twines her fingers with his, forcing him to look at her. "I mean it. Better you than... no you. I just, I need time. That's all."

He nods, smiling gently, and she feels like a first step has been made that neither of them is going to be able to untake.

"A day at a time," he suggests. "We'll take it a day at a time."

She accepts the compromise, accepting, too, that this isn't going to be easy. She can't even decide whether he's the same man or not, but then, maybe she doesn't have to. Maybe it will all become clear in the end.

"We should go to Mum's," she decides resolutely, slipping her hand out of his and heading towards the door. "They've got better spare rooms than I have, and Dad'll need to sort you out... some sort of life, I dunno."

She's stopped in the hallway, however, by a hand on her wrist. She looks up into his eyes, into the same eyes, and they tell her what they always used to tell her whenever she was this close to him.

"Rose," he says again, and she doesn't think he can help it when his hand caresses her waist gently. "I want to spend my life with you." She takes a sharp breath, a defence, but he shakes his head when she opens her mouth and continues when she shuts it. "I don't know what's going to happen between us, and to be quite honest, right now, I don't care. I have one life now. One chance. I've spent an entire nine hundred years throwing away all the chances I've had, and I'm tired of it, I've had enough. So, whatever happens, I want you to know..."

For a final time, he reaches down to her hand, and he locks eyes with her, nothing but sincerity written across his face. It's the first time he's ever been so open with her, and it scares her to death. But she doesn't want him to stop.

"Yeah?" she prompts without meaning to, wanting very much to hear what he has to say.

"I want you to know... this is my choice. This is what I choose." His hand tightens and he takes in a breath, like he's steadying himself before a dive. "I choose you."

For some reason, in those words, she can hear him – the real him, whoever that is any more – coming through to her, like he's sending her a message from across the stars. Maybe he is her message.

"Doctor..." Her voice is breaking, and she doesn't want it to, she can't let it, but somehow he always knows which buttons to push, even when he hasn't seen her for two and a half years.

"I just thought you should know," he finishes with a nod, and Rose senses some leftover remnants of fear still lurking in him, a caged animal waiting to be set loose. As wisps of silence begins to curl around them, he suddenly straightens, and a barrier that's not meant to fool her comes into play. "So, your mum's?"

"Yeah," Rose agrees, smiling. "I'll just go pack up a couple of things. Shouldn't be long."

He follows her into her bedroom, but she doesn't feel self conscious about that. Okay, maybe a little as she tries to pack some bras and knickers inconspicuously into her bag, but by that point he's quite distracted by looking at himself in her mirror. She stops for a moment, watching him as he lengthens his face, running a hand over his jaw and cheeks, then up into his hair as he measures its height. His fingers dance on the buttons of the suit as he follows the rest of his body, like he's seeing himself for the very first time.

"We should go shopping tomorrow," he says casually, eyeing himself almost suspiciously in the glass. "Domestic, I know, but this blue is hideous – why didn't anyone tell me?"

She smirks and straightens, wandering over to his side. She gazes at the two of them, at their reflections, staring back at her. He's the same height, not that she expected any different, and they even _look_ like they fit together; no wonder everyone thought they were a couple.

"You need to, as well, by the way," he adds, considering her out of the corner of his eye. "New, new, new Doctor. New, new Rose."

She allows herself to laugh because it's the easiest thing to do, and why complicate things when they're already complicated enough? So she agrees, and they spend the next ten minutes waiting for a taxi, the silence companionable. What Rose needs to do most, now, is to sleep. And she needs to wake up and find out that this isn't all a dream, that the Doctor is really with her and set to stay. There's a lot of learning they'll both need to do, but she gets the feeling that as long as he's with her – even if he's a little bit different – that it'll be all right in the end.

She fell in love with him once before. It shouldn't be so very hard to do it again.

**End this Part**


	3. Three

**Author's Note**: Once again, thank you -- thank you -- everyone who's reviewing. You guys are giving me such nice warm fuzzy feelings and spurring me on so much. I read all of your comments and it makes me feel like I'm writing something really worth it. So, yeah, thanks (: And another thing: this story needs a beta. Could someone who wants to help me out get in touch? I'm looking for quite an in-depth beta and someone who'll stick around for the whole fic, maybe more! It'd be great to actually get to know some of you who've been following my work. Anyway, enough rambling, have chapter three.

* * *

**A Life Well Lived**  
Three

The Doctor whistles in awe as they climb out of the taxi.

"Just as I remember it," he comments while Rose slings her rucksack onto her back and hands the driver a crisp twenty pound note.

The house is still big, still a mansion, and he imagines that Pete must still be doing very well for himself, cooped up as head of the Torchwood foundation here.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel beneath their feet as they make their way up to the front door, the Doctor taking everything in as they go. He's not used to looking properly at things because so often the buildings he's in or the people he meets are things he'll never see again, so why waste his time on trivialities?

But now he's set to stay in this world and he knows he needs to start noticing things, will need to take all the minuscule details about human life very seriously from here on out. He notices the way the housekeeper (_housekeeper_?) opens the front door before they've walked up the steps to the porch, and the way Rose's face curls into a smile that probably no one but him knows is fake. He's so looking forward to learning her all over again, to figuring her out and surprising her and loving her. Greatest adventure he'll ever have? Yes, he'll go with that.

While they stand in the hallway, the grand staircase disappearing away up into to the upper levels ahead of them, Jackie emerges from a door at the back, two cups of tea in hand.

"I thought you'd probably follow us," she says, approaching them both and holding out the mugs. "Tony's asleep now, but if you go through that door," and she points over to the far side of the hall to a pair of double doors, "you'll find the living room. Plenty of things to keep you occupied until Pete gets back."

Rose thankfully takes a mug from her mum and makes her way towards the room. The Doctor frowns interestedly, accepting the offering of tea.

"Pete's gone?" he asks, taking a small sip. Jackie considers him seriously, and for a second, he almost thinks she's cold about his return. Her eyelashes are heavily laced with mascara and it's like she's hiding something beneath her exterior. But then it passes, in less than a moment, and she sighs.

"He just had something last-minute he had to check at Torchwood. What with all the universe hopping we've been doing we had to keep an eye on whether or not reality was going to explode!"

She laughs, but the Doctor doesn't. He knows how close they came today to losing the whole of reality, every world and every dimension.

He looks up, through the open door on the other side of the hallway, and he can see Rose's legs sticking out from where she must be sitting on a sofa. There will come a time, he knows, when he won't be able to protect her. No amount of hiding her, or pawning her off, or keeping her safe will work. And he resents himself, a little, for forcing her to be with him and not have a choice about anything. It isn't fair on her, either on the life she built here without him, or the life she wanted to have with him – in the TARDIS. Mixing them both and pretending it's all right... it isn't fair.

"Doctor?"

He shakes himself slightly, and some tea dribbles down his mug onto his fingers.

"Right, sorry," he says, and smiles tightly over the rim of of the patterned china. "I'll just..." He indicates the room with a jerk of his thumb, but before he can even turn away, Jackie's touching his arm.

"I don't know what's going on between you two," she starts, in the motherly way she still seems to manage perfectly, "and I'm not going to pretend I understand what you're doing here and out in the TARDIS at once. But you haven't been here over the past couple of years, Doctor, you don't _know_. If you could see how much she's needed you, how much she loves you..."

She trails off, as lost for words about their situation as the Doctor is. He nods in thanks and appreciation, an odd comforting feeling tingling through his – now very human – body.

"I do know," he says quietly, and he does. "If it's been for her anything like it's been for me... we need each other just as much as we ever did. I just don't know what that means for us now."

Jackie bows her head slightly, apparently understanding. With another, this time gentle, smile, the Doctor goes off towards the living room. Depositing his mug on the coffee table, next to Rose's, he collapses down into the sofa with an exaggerated sigh and lays his head back onto the cushions.

"What a day," he muses aloud, irony laced in his words in a laugh. He turns his head, looking affectionately at Rose.

"I didn't think... I'd come back," she admit quietly, staring down at the floor. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece is all that separates them from silence.

The Doctor sits up slightly. "No?"

"After I found you, I mean." She turns on the sofa, looking directly at him, and he places a hand backwards onto a cushion, steadying himself under her gaze. The fabric feels strange under his fingers, soft and velvety, and he suddenly realises just how tired he is.

"I thought either I'd find you and we'd... I dunno... I didn't really think about it. Or I'd die. I never thought you'd..."

She trails off again, and the Doctor nods, understanding.

"You never thought I'd live a life like this," he finishes for her, and she nods, slowly. He takes a breath and bravely reaches for her hand resting on her lap. "Do you – I mean, this, do you want... this?" He takes a few moments, thinking, watching her, gauging her reaction. His thumb drifts absently over the back of her hand. "I know, he didn't really think about it, and you've been lumbered with taking care of me. But... I never asked. _He_ never asked. I want to live the rest of my life with you, but maybe you... don't."

She looks hurt, then, and the frowns spreads down her whole face like she's standing in the rain. "Of course I do!" she protests. "And he knew that. You knew that, that's why you... did it. I get it, I do. It's going to be difficult to get used to, but I get it. I do understand."

The Doctor falls into silent thought, wondering where she gets the wisdom and naivety to know so much and so little all at once.

Rose's eyes, their depth and age, burn into his and he wonders if he really could spend the rest of his life gazing into them.

She laughs almost bitterly and looks away. "I guess he was trying to give me what he never could. A life with him. With you."

The Doctor feels an uncanny smile tug at the corners of his mouth, and he goes with it, lets it shine through in his voice. "Like I said, I can be very stupid."

She smiles at that, too, and he's pleased he's able to reach out to her in a way no one else probably has over these past few years.

"I want it," she says to him, looking back, and the strength with which she speaks gives him some sense of hope of their future. "I do, I want this, with you. In a way, I guess I always have. I just... it'll be weird, without the other stuff. The running and the monsters. That's kind of – it's part of who you are."

The Doctor nods sagely. "I know, Rose. Believe me, I know."

The clock on the mantelpiece becomes louder to him, and makes him almost incapable of thinking. He's suddenly overcome with the very strong urge to go to sleep, something he hasn't experienced in a good few months. It must be part of this being half human lark. Even his chest feels weaker, heavier, when there's only one heart instead of two. Everything around him feels duller, like he's lost one of his senses, and somehow he knows he'll never get that back.

"I think I need to... sleep," he admits to Rose, and he doesn't bother hiding the surprise or confusion he knows is in his voice.

"Yeah, me too. Long day."

He laughs in irony. "Yeah."

"I'll go find Mum," Rose says abruptly, and she gets up quickly off the sofa. The Doctor stays sitting, waiting for her to leave, but she surprises him when she pauses by his side. He looks up expectantly, wondering, and suddenly she's leaning down and planting a quick, chaste kiss on his lips. "New life tomorrow," she whispers with warmth, and when she smiles at him he feels something new and giddy spread through him like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

He catches her hand in his and can't help the grin that spreads across his face. "Rose Tyler," he quips jokingly, smiling. "New life with you? I can't wait."

She looks like she's nineteen again, like he's just given her the whole world and a lifetime ticket for one, and he starts to feel how he remembers feeling, all those years ago. How he felt when he looked at her, when she smiled at him, the feel of her hand in his and her body pressed up close. He sighs happily, realising for the first time since he's ended up here just how lucky he is and how happy they can be, given the chance.

He knows it's going to be difficult, and strange, he can't deny that and – what's more – he doesn't want to. But they've been given the one thing he never thought he would have, and that's a chance to be with her, to show her how much he really loves her, even if that means doing it for the rest of his life. Especially if it means that.

He sips his tea while Rose goes to find her mum, weighing up all the possibilities in his head. Many, many outcomes crop up in his mind, some unbidden. He tries to push the less pleasant ones away, tries to not think about how every one of them involves staying on Earth, living out his years one day at a time, rather than running around like a lunatic.

There's another version of himself out there now, which means two Doctors, and that's never a good thing. The other him will be alone right now, he knows: there's no way Donna was capable of holding a Time Lord consciousness in her mind, and if he knows anything about himself (which, of course, he does), he most probably wiped her mind of anything Time Lord – including her memories of him and the TARDIS – and took her safely back home, to live out the rest of her life in Chiswick. Yes, that's what he'll have done, the idiot, meaning that right now he'll be more alone than he's ever felt before.

"Not me," he says into the silent air, taking a swig of milky tea.

He gets to stay here with Rose, once again keeping his feet firmly on the ground. No space, no time, no TARDIS. No wars. No people following him around like he's a god, no turning them into little tin soldiers. He won't have any of that, any more. The only thing he has now to define him is Rose.

He hopes it's enough.

-I-

They're put into two separate rooms, and he's not sure whether that's Rose's doing or her mum's. There's a door in his room which leads to a bathroom, and a door in the bathroom that leads to Rose's room, so they're not so very far away, but it feels strange to have this separation from her. For years there's been a metaphorical wall between them that he's been aching to break down, and now he has to lie here in the dark and listen to the sounds of her sleeping.

Actually, right now, she isn't sleeping, she's cleaning her teeth in their shared bathroom, but he knows that tonight – despite his tiredness – he's going to be listening for her, watching out for her, and sleep isn't going to happen.

So he lies on the patterned covers, in the double bed, his hands linked behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling. The room is cold, and dark. He wonders about reaching over to the bedside table and flicking on the lamp, but he quite likes the darkness: he can make shapes from the shadows in his mind.

A slab of light falls over his body, then filled by a silhouette, and he looks up to find Rose – in a pair of rather adorable teddy bear pyjamas – standing in the doorway, her toothbrush in hand.

"Do you want one?" she asks, and she shakes her hand slightly, indicating the brush.

The Doctor sits up, surprised. He falters, the idea of such a human act implying to him suddenly very alien. He never had to bother with things like cleaning teeth on the TARDIS, a Time Lord's teeth are naturally impervious to most forms of plaque. He doesn't even know whether they still are or not.

At his silence she disappears into the bathroom again, but she soon emerges with another brush, all wrapped up in its packaging. She throws it to him and he catches it, perfectly, running his fingers along the cardboard like it's glass and could cut him. Then he unceremoniously rips open the plastic, letting the brush fall onto the duvet. The toothbrush is purple, and he smiles to himself: back on the TARDIS, when they were... when he and Rose were... together... his cup by the sink did have a purple toothbrush. It wasn't his, probably left over from someone, but he likes the thought of Rose noticing – and moreover remembering – such a triviality.

Then he tells himself not to be so stupid (he's doing a lot of that lately) and that it's probably just coincidence. So, hopping up off the bed, toothbrush in hand, he joins her in the bathroom.

The mirror stretches the whole wall above the sink, so he has no choice but to stare at himself as he stands there and scrubs, feeling like a complete fool. He ends up using too much toothpaste and it froths out of his mouth from the corners, making him look like a rabid animal. Rose laughs at him so he growls at her, pretending, and that just makes her laugh harder. Then it starts to burn and he spits it out faster than he could ever think possible, leaning over the sink practically gasping for breath. Rose pours a glass of water and hands it to him.

"You're so incapable," she teases, her eyes dancing in the bright light of the bathroom, and he looks up over his shoulder, affectionately glaring at her.

"I never made fun of you when you were first trying a new life out," he points out, then takes a large gulp of water.

"Yeah, but, I didn't dance around all over the place acting like I knew it all. And you did tease me a bit."

Finishing the water, he straightens and stretches, arching his shoulders back and enjoying the aching feel of the muscles there.

"I like these," he says when he's finished, pulling at the fabric of Rose's pyjama top. It's cotton, soft, and something strangely comforting. "They're very cute. Very Rose. Why do I recognise them?"

She blushes a bit, then, and he drops his hand, wondering if he's done the wrong thing again.

"Used to wear a pair on the TARDIS. Bought more when I got here," she explains, and of course, she's right: a distinct memory comes to mind of her finding him in the middle of the night with a cup of tea, because she was awake and wondered if he might be too.

He doesn't say anything in response, just smiles fondly at her, feeling every bit his nine hundred years and at the same time like he's just been born. Which, a voice says in the back of his mind, he supposes he has, but it has little bearing on the present and he doesn't want to think about that right now.

"I should..." She points back over her shoulder to the open doorway, and the Doctor glances into her room. He's surprised to find it's been made to look a lot like her old room on the TARDIS, and the thought makes him both smile smile and frown, giving her an odd look.

He knows Rose can tell what he's looking at by the quickness of her reply.

"It helped me," she babbles quickly, reaching up to fiddle with her hair idly as she looks at the mirror instead of him. "When I was first here. Couldn't sleep at all, so... we made it somewhere I could sleep. And then it just, it sort of – "

"Rose," he cuts in kindly, "it's okay. You don't need to... explain everything. We all have our coping methods."

She nods, a tinge of sadness in her eyes when she looks up at him next. "Yeah..."

"Anyway," he continues brightly, smiling, "brand new day tomorrow. So, yes, we should probably retire to our... well, respective bed chambers."

She starts to laugh and he's not sure what to do next, whether he's just supposed to leave it at that or whether he's supposed to walk her into her room, act the gentleman. He's never really done this before. He settles for awkwardly going to kiss her on the cheek. However, she's laughing too much and all he ends up doing is bumping her nose, and suddenly, he's laughing too.

And suddenly, surprising him completely, he feels her hand against his and he's being led to her bedroom, to _her_ double bed, and she flops down on top of the pink covers, sticking her feet out over the edge, looking up at him with a knowing, teasing smirk.

When he doesn't do anything she slaps the duvet next to her.

"I thought... we were going to bed," he says, bemused, as he sits.

"We are. But I thought... maybe... we could talk for a bit. If you wanted. I mean, if you still..."

"Oh, I do! Of course I do. We've got, well, catching up I suppose."

They're both nervous, he can sense it in the air around them, in the laughter and their quick glances, but he doesn't mind.

They chat until, according to the digital clock beside Rose's bed, it's just gone three in the morning. At first it's nervous, both of them dancing around issues, but eventually they get into the thick of it. He tells her about Martha and everything they did, and he tells her about Donna and everything _they_ did and he listens as she tells him about her life here.

She ends up in his arms as they lie on the bed, legs intertwined and bodies warm against each other through the clothes. She falls asleep in the middle of a story and he presses a kiss to her forehead as the tendrils of sleep take her.

"Good night, Rose," he whispers into her hair, and he wonders if she dreamed of this moment as much as he did while they were separated.

It may not be easy, what they're going to embark on, but as he thinks about the man he used to be and the man he is now... he knows whose set of cards he'd rather be playing. He doesn't think he could give this up for the world.


	4. Four

**Author's Note**: Once again, it must be said how overwhelmed by the cmompliments I am. I can't believe this fic is getting so much support! Thank you everyone, for saying such nice things and commenting on my work, it's a great reward. And thank you to those who offered to beta, I've got a good team now, so all should be well. You guys, reviewers and betas, are the best. /squishes/

* * *

**A Life Well Lived**  
Four

Rose wakes up alone. Sunlight streams in from behind the curtains they forgot to close and she blinks as she wakes, squinting into the light. According to her clock it's nearly ten in the morning.

She's under the covers, wrapped up in her own little cocoon, and she's sure she didn't fall asleep like this. She remembers talking with the Doctor (it's almost strange using his name, but there's nothing else she can rightly call him, even in her mind) for hours and falling asleep in his warmth, his breath trailing softly down her neck. There was one heartbeat, not two, but oddly the rhythm in his body was the same as it had always been.

It means she either moved under here by herself or he tucked her in and left her to sleep. At the moment, she's not sure which she'd prefer.

In any case, she throws the covers off and pads along the carpet to the bathroom. She frowns, noticing the Doctor's bedroom door is open. Walking through, she notices his bed hasn't been slept in; in fact, there's nothing to suggest anyone else has even been here. Panic flutters in her heart like a startled animal, and she quickly goes out onto the landing. The sounds of kitchen clatter drift up to her – evidently, her mother is trying to give Tony some breakfast.

Rose wonders, briefly, if it all really was just a dream. But her body aches like it always does when she jumps across parallels and she knows he must be around here somewhere. She disappears into her own room for a few minutes, retrieving a dressing gown and a pair of slippers, before descending the stairs and walking, wide-eyed, into the kitchen.

She's in the middle of a stretch when she freezes to the spot, unprepared for the sight laid out before her.

Jackie's by the toaster, waiting for it to pop, and just as Rose imagined Tony is strapped into his high-chair, half a bowel of cereal congealing in front of him. But at the other end of the table, contentedly nursing a cup of tea between his hands and cooing at the toothlessly grinning toddler across from him, is the Doctor.

"Morning, sweetheart," Jackie says without turning around, and Rose wonders where her mum got her eyes seemingly planted in the back of her head.

"Morning," she replies idly, watching the Doctor with interest.

He looks up and gives her a warm smile. There is something very strange about having him sat at her kitchen table in the morning. It feels more alien than the TARDIS ever did.

"He says you're going shopping today," Jackie continues as the toaster clangs, pinging the toast up. She grabs a couple of pieces and starts buttering them. "Good thing too, if you ask me, we need to go shopping and it'll be good for you two to get out of the house."

Rose still can't take her eyes off the Doctor. It's like her mind won't fathom that he's there, won't process the fact that he's sitting in her kitchen with a cup of tea, waiting to be served breakfast from her mum. It shouldn't be so surprising, Rose thinks, they had stayed with Jackie back in the Powell Estates on more than one occasion. But this is different. This is... new.

The Doctor chuckles and, taking a sip of his morning tea, he gets to his feet. As he approaches her he reaches out a hand to touch her waist and, quite naturally, he dips his head and kisses her on the cheek.

"Morning," he whispers, and when he pulls back there's a sort of keen excitement in his eyes, the kind he used to get when he had a new planet in mind and wanted to share it with her.

She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but she's still too stunned to make anything more than a few hashed attempts at speech.

Eventually, just as the Doctor goes to sit down again, she manages, "I see you two – sorry, Tony, three – have been having a party, then."

"Nah," the Doctor counters instantly, leaning back in the chair to make it balance on two legs while he grips the table. "Not a party. Barely even a gathering, with three."

Jackie turns with a huff, depositing two slices of toast with marmalade in front of the Doctor. "Seven o'clock I found him down here, poking around in things that don't belong to him. He'd already been around the whole house once, and the gardens. Cheeky bugger, it's a wonder he didn't set the burglar alarms off."

"I should keep you on a leash," Rose comments, laughing, and taking a seat at the table.

"Well, I wouldn't complain," the Doctor responds without missing a beat, giving a flirtatious wiggle of his eyebrows as he bites into his toast. She blushes, hard, suddenly wishing she had a book or newspaper to hide behind. "I found Stan, by the way," he starts to babble again, and Rose smiles. "I like Stan. He's a good man, Stan, particularly at half past six in the morning. I've never seen a gardener so keen. Do you know, he reminds me of – oi!"

He protests as Rose reaches across to nick a slice of his toast, enjoying the way the butter oozes into her mouth and mixes with the tang of the marmalade as she bites down.

"Yummy," she says teasingly to the Doctor, mid-mouthful, and he snatches his toast back from between her fingers.

"Oh, stop it, you two," Jackie admonishes affectionately, brandishing a spatula at them. "You'll upset Tony before I've even made the eggs."

Tony, as it happens, isn't particularly upset. He's watching both Rose and the Doctor with wide, fresh eyes, not understanding the strange new man or who he is, but very much enjoying the way he makes his big sister laugh. Of course at two, he's not really conscious of any of this, just of the atmosphere that surrounds the mysterious man who says things he doesn't understand.

Breakfast remains a strange affair, with the Doctor declining anything apart from toast and tea and Rose enjoying a full English breakfast. She helps half way through, frying some hash browns in a pan while waiting for her baked beans to heat up, and she's acutely aware of the Doctor's eyes following her as she moves. It's strange to feel scrutinised from just a gaze, and it's not long before she starts to feel she can't do anything without him noticing.

Pete is at work, at Torchwood, and Rose feels a slight pang of not having seen him since they got back. She makes a mental note to pay him a visit later in the day.

She laughs a lot while they eat, partly at Tony, partly at the interaction between her mother and the Doctor. She knows things aren't quite settled yet, that there's more dust to fly, but for the moment she tries to keep it out of her mind and take things a moment at a time. Sometimes, when she looks at the Doctor, she pauses for a moment, remembering that he isn't the same man: that leaves a sting. But he's trying, she knows he is, and she wants to try too, because she does _want_ this to work, she wants to be happy with him and feel secure with him. Last night was a good start – although, she knows that's all it was. A start.

After breakfast Rose slips away quietly from the table. For once she's pleased about Tony's temper tantrums, it allows her to leave the room unnoticed. Even the Doctor is too busy wiping soggy cereal off his suit to realise her absence, and by the time he does, she'll probably be ready to deal with him by then.

She needs some time alone, time to think, time to process the morning and the night before. Part of her brain tells her that's a very bad idea, that she should just roll with the content, happy feeling that's starting to envelop her – but she can't. Part of her can't, or won't, let go.

Shaking her head to try and put it out of her mind, she makes her way upstairs to get dressed. If she tries not to think about the other man, the man she loves, whizzing around time and space in his magical blue box, maybe things will start to get easier. The trouble is, she doesn't think she can.

-I-

Her room is the first place he checks. Her pyjamas are strewn across the bed and her wardrobe is open ajar, and the pair of trainers by the bedroom door have gone, but she's not in here. He frowns slightly, wishing she hadn't just wandered off like that. He didn't think it was possible for her to wander off in her own house, but here she is, doing it again, just like she always used to.

The amount of times she used to get lost in the TARDIS is unbelievable, and –

He stops that train of thought before it can run him down; he doesn't want to think about the past, doesn't want to remember what it was like, or the other life he could have. What he wants to do, right now, is find Rose.

He feels a bit lost after her bedroom. He looks in the living room, too, but she isn't there either. Neither is she in the wine cellar or the utility room. Eventually, after five or ten minutes he's back in the kitchen and Jackie suggests she might be out in the garden.

"'S where she used to spend a lot of her time when she was... well... before." Her eyes flick up to his briefly, before she goes back to the toddler in her arms.

The Doctor gives his appreciation, then darts out the back door. The sun's strong in his eyes and he has to squint slightly to see ahead of him. He slows to an amble, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers as he strolls down the lawns. He spots her at the bottom of a long, gentle hill; she's standing by the fountains, leaning over a stone wall and staring into the beyond. He takes his time to approach her, eventually coming to a stop right beside her.

He doesn't look at her, instead gazes out over the crystal water winking up at him in the sunlight.

Even without looking at her he can tell how she's feeling: there's an atmosphere surrounding her like a dark cloud, warding him off because she wants to be on her own. Once upon a time he would have listened, but she's all he has now, so maybe getting to the bottom of it is the best thing he can do.

He doesn't know what to say, he's never been a situation quite like this before. He's thankful, and surprised, when Rose speaks first.

"I s'pose you've come to tell me we should go," she sighs, miserably, and he frowns, but he still doesn't look at her.

"I haven't come to tell you anything," he counters, and it's true, he's just come to be with her.

There's silence again, and the Doctor sniffs. Leaning forward, he splays his hand out on the cold stone, arms stretched either side of him. In the pool below there are goldfish, lots of them, some tiny, some bigger than he's ever seen before. The water from the fountain trickles endlessly on he smiles at how peaceful this place can make him.

Rose isn't going to say anything. Something between breakfast and now has completely changed her, made her withdrawn and quiet in her own little world. He wonders if this is how she spent the years of her life, trapped here, unable to talk to anyone. He swallows, then, turning to her, he reaches out and touches her elbow gently.

"Hey," he says tenderly, but all she does is drop her gaze to her trainers caked with dirt.

"Sorry," she mumbles, and there's something so young in her voice it makes him smile. "It's just... it's hard. 'Cause you look like him."

The Doctor can feel his face harden, but somehow, it's in sympathy. "I am him," he reminds her gently. "I really am."

Rose turns on the spot and looks up at him, and he's taken aback by the tears in her eyes. She used to be so strong. Is this what he does to her, is this who he's turned her into?

"I believe you." Her voice is simple, like a peace offering, and he wonders if this is a speech she's been rehearsing. "I know you are. But at the same time you're out there having the life we used to have. Without me."

"It's not... quite the life we used to have." He wants to take her hand, but he's not sure now is the right time. "I've been doing this for nine hundred years, don't forget. The life we had isn't the same as the life I'm living now. Either of me."

"No," Rose agrees, and she looks out over the water again, a wistful look spreading across her features and making her look suddenly older. "I suppose not."

"Rose... If there's anything I can do..."

He's hesitant, his breath bated. She laughs bitterly, shaking her head slightly so the wind catches her hair and blows it clear from her face.

"Unless you can take me back," she jokes, but the real sadness comes from her meaning it. She wants to go back, he knows she does, and the inability to give her what she wants and needs most in the world is crushing. He always used to be so able to make her smile, make her laugh, take her to the wonderful and amazing places she deserved... he took it for granted, he remembers, and he wishes so much that he hadn't.

"It's not just you," Rose continues, still not looking at him. "The things we did, the places we went. Living in the TARDIS... I had a life there, a real life, and I... I'll never have that again." Her voice drops with her head, and the Doctor wonders for a brief moment if she's crying. "I always thought if I ever found you I'd get it back. Now I won't. Ever."

He doesn't have words of comfort her, because he knows exactly what she's feeling, but more so. It was his life, that life, the definition of who he was. How is he supposed to let that go?

So, instead of empty words, he steps forward and pulls her into a hug. His arms surround her, giving her his warmth, and he lays his head on top of her and stares hollowly over the grounds ahead. He cradles her like a child and tries, so very hard, not to let his own feelings weigh him down.

"He thought... we'd be happy," he tries quietly, and she shifts in his arms, pulling away so she can look at him properly.

"But if he's you, doesn't he _know_?" she asks, shock in her voice.

"Know what?"

"That... you don't want to be here either."

He takes a moment to consider that because he's not so sure it's true. "I never said – " he starts, reaching to pluck at a strand of hair dancing around her face.

"But you don't." She swallows, looking at him like he doesn't understand his own emotions. "I know you, better than you do by the look of it, and I know you'd rather be up there dancing in the stars than down here with – "

"Stop it," he pushes out, and he's surprised at how angry his voice sounds from behind gritted teeth. Come to think of it, his heart is beating a little erratically, and his breathing isn't as easy as it once was. He lets her go and shakes his head. "Just stop it, Rose. I made a choice to – "

"You're trapped here like I am," she points out, cutting him off _again_, and she folds her arms in defence. "Said so yourself."

"Oh, don't be so naïve!" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, the snap in them relentless. He lets out a sigh through his tight mouth, raising his eyes to the heavens. "I didn't mean – " But he knows it's useless.

"Yes you did," Rose argues back, and when he glances at her, the look of incredulity makes him want to walk away and leave her. It must be something about being human. "You think I'm naïve, do you? Sitting down here, stuck on Earth, fighting aliens and finding a way back to you, yeah, I don't know a thing. Not like you, up there in your TARDIS, lording it over everyone like you're – "

"What?" he cuts her off this time and he doesn't care, his anger's flared up like a rash that won't go away. "Say that again," he dares, his gaze so sharp he can almost feel it cutting her.

Rose seems surprised and she backs down, suddenly losing her ire. "...What?"

"Yvonne," he practically spits, and there's a second or two of silence.

"...Sorry?" Rose questions, completely timid in the face of his anger, but she hasn't seen anything yet. She has no idea how far off angry he is.

"Yvonne Hartman," he clarifies, trying to calm himself down because even being irritated with her won't solve anything, not in the long run. It might make him feel better, but it's not worth losing what they've been trying to build up over the past day. "She said that. About me. Lording it over humans like I was some kind of god, do you remember? No, you weren't there." Realisation dawns on him like an inverted ray of sunshine. "I guess working at Torchwood has done more than help you find me," he finishes coldly.

"What are you talking about?" Rose asks, confused and sounding still a little angry with him.

The Doctor sighs heavily, his shoulders dropping. "Doesn't matter."

"Yeah, it does." She takes a determined step towards him and stops just in front of him. He doesn't look at her. "Doctor, tell me."

Instantly his head snaps up, ghosts of his anger still imprinted on his nature. "Oh, so I'm the Doctor now? Not just some... some clone who looks like him, I'm a real man with feelings, am I?"

He's hurting her, using words as weapons, and as he meets eyes with her he can tell she's trying not to let the tears build up. This is hard for her, he knows. But God damn, it's hard for him too.

...'God damn'? He must be human.

"What if I told you we swapped?" he barbs, trying a different approach with her. She looks taken aback.

"You what?"

"What if I said that I'm him, Rose, that I'm actually him? That the man you're pining for out in the universe is really standing right in front of you, staring at you. Would it change anything, to know that I was here, with you?"

She gives him a calculating look and he realises, she's actually trying to figure it out. "It doesn't... change anything," she says uncertainly, and he's reminded of just after he first regenerated, how quiet and unsure she had been. "You're not him."

"No. But it would. If I were him, things would change."

She looks up at him, her eyebrows pulled together in a frown. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm trying to make you see this will pass!" he cries with frustration, running a hand through his unkempt hair. "If your feelings change just by _thinking_ about this in a different way, then surely you can accept that they'll change over time?"

"What if I don't want them to?" she challenges, and he'll admit, those words sting. "I don't want to forget him," she adds quietly.

The Doctor sighs, feeling more defeated than angry now. "Do you honestly think you will?" he tries, bitter laughter escaping into his words. "Even if we... build a life here, make this work, do you think you'll ever stop thinking about him?"

He's asking now because, in all honesty, he needs to know. He knew this would be difficult, and it hurts that he wants to give her the one thing he can't: himself.

"I don't know."

She's looking at him all soft eyes and open heart, and suddenly whatever anger he has left dies away, water on the flames. She's always had the ability to slay him, to bring him down a notch; perhaps that's why he needs her.

"Don't listen to me," he says wearily, an attempt at tenderness, and he reaches down, taking both her hands in his and holding them at his chest. "I'm... It's..."

"Difficult?" she suggests.

He nods. "Difficult, yes, that's one word. For what this is."

They spend a moment looking at each other, the argument fading away into the seconds and minutes behind them. She's searching his face, properly, scrutinising everything about him, and he realises it's the first time she's ever looked at him like that.

She moves one hand from his to feel over his heart, mimicking how they were at Bad Wolf Bay.

"I do want this," she tells him, and he can see truth in her eyes. "And... at least he's not on his own, I s'pose. He may not have me, but he's got Donna." She smiles slightly. "And I've got you."

He hesitates. Now is his window, now is the right time to tell her the truth about Donna and what had to happen to her. But the way she's smiling at him, holding on to hope and maybe giving _them_ a window to work things out... he can't. He just can't.

So, he nods. "Yeah," he agrees, a soft smile to match hers. The hand that isn't holding hers any more drifts to her waist in comfort. "You do."

She bites down on her lip. "Maybe we should go," she suggests. "We really need to get you out of those clothes."

He quirks an eyebrow and his mouth tips up in a mischievous smirk.

"Not what I meant!" Rose says laughingly, stepping back and lifting her hands up into the air. "Didn't know you had such a filthy mind, Doctor."

"Oh, Rose," he laughs, catching her hand as they start to walk back up the lawns. "You have no idea."


	5. Five

**Author's Note**: Just wanted to givea big thank you to everyne supporting this fic and me. I know this update took a while, but now that I've sorted out betas and a way I can write more or less all the time, chapters should be coming in thick and fast. I'm really enjoying writing this and, well, thank you to all of you reading, because you're the guys who make it worth it!

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**A Life Well Lived**  
Five

The shops are crowded.

Somehow, Rose imagined that everything would be different. She, the Doctor, the Doctor version 2.0, Donna, and a continuously long list of people have been out in the universe, saving reality itself from destruction. Now, she's walking along a street with the Doctor, sunlight beaming down upon them like a blessing from heaven, and all she can think is how much the people here don't know. They've no idea how close they all came to not existing.

"Doesn't it feel weird to you?" Rose asks when they stop outside a window full of mannequins.

The Doctor, who is letting his eyes roam the clothes on show, turns to her. "A little," he admits thoughtfully. "But I'll get used to it. Given time." He smiles softly and reaches for her hand.

"I didn't mean us," she clarifies quickly, slipping her hand into her jacket pocket. "I meant... one minute you're out there, saving everything, and the next you're down here for the rest of your life. Like you've woken up and everything's changed."

"Well," he reasons, looking back at the window. "Everything _has_ changed. Would that look good on me?"

He's pointing to a large, grey hoody with a logo for a famous band slapped on the front of it.

"No," Rose says, glancing at it, and she walks into the shop before he can say anything.

-I-

The day is strange. She and the Doctor have been shopping before, over the years, on various continents of different planets, making their way slowly through market stalls and food stands, holding hands. She remembers a time when they spent a whole day (or outing – it was hard to measure time on the TARDIS) walking through a sand covered marketplace, the two suns creeping lower and lower into the bright orange sky. She's still got the necklace he bought for her, or at least, she hopes she has: it's still in her room on the TARDIS, along with everything else she left behind.

She doesn't ask him about what's left of her in his life. They move from shop to shop, each one getting more expensive as he finds what he's looking for. Pinstripes, he wants, pinstripes and suits, because this isn't like regeneration: his tastes haven't changed, he wants to be the same as he always was.

Rose isn't sure how she feels about this, about dressing him up like a replica, but when she imagines him in jeans and t-shirts and trainers, he turns into a man she doesn't want him to be.

They eventually just decide to make their way to a shop with just men's clothes. He pulls out a variety of cotton shirts and even a couple of t-shirts, some brightly coloured and some dull. He tries each one on, and Rose obliges when he asks for her opinion. Yes to the dark blue, yes to the deep red, no the orange and definitely no to the green. He picks up a couple of ties and a new pair of converse, but the suits he tries are all hideous.

Rose pays with her credit card, and he doesn't say anything.

-I-

They have lunch that isn't really lunch. It's half past two in the afternoon and they pass a street vendor who's selling hot dogs, beefburgers, toasties and ice cream. Rose has a cheese and tomato toastie while the Doctor umms and ahhs over which meat, what kind of cheese, until eventually she gets fed up and tells him to go with simple ham and cheese, which he does.

She realises with a sense of trepidation that she only has her credit card, no cash, but she doesn't even get as far as mentioning it. The Doctor, perhaps realising that she's been paying for him all day, stuffs a hand into the pocket of his jacket.

"Must have some somewhere..." he mutters with a frown, and Rose watches, touched, as he digs around in pockets that seem far bigger than they look.

Eventually he pulls out a mangled, slightly ripped, five pound note, combined with a gleeful, "A-ha!". Rose can't help a laugh. He hands it over and off they go, walking down the street munching on toasted sandwiches and trying not to drip melted cheese onto the pavement behind them.

The Doctor tells Rose about a time he and Donna went to a Bulgarian market (the planet, not the place, naturally), and Donna ended up offending one of the stall owners, leading to their arrest. They were nearly executed, and the only reason they weren't was because he finally managed to convince Donna to apologise. She, apparently, moaned about it for weeks.

When the sandwiches and stories are finished they keep walking, and the Doctor's hand slowly finds its way to hers. She walks with her shoulder knocking against his and they laugh when he drops his shopping. Rose stops at a cashpoint and they take a taxi home.

-I-

The smell of roast beef greets them as they walk in the door, both of them loaded down with bags.

"Bloody hell," Jackie exclaims, emerging from the kitchen rubbing her hands with a tea-towel. "You didn't have to buy everything in the shops you know, they'll be there tomorrow. An' I hope he didn't clean you out," she adds to her daughter, who rolls her eyes good-naturedly and laughs.

"No, Mum, it was fine," she assures, smiling up at the Doctor who gives her a knowing look. "He paid for lunch."

This impresses Jackie, who immediately shoos the Doctor upstairs with all his shopping. Rose watches as he trots up the stairs and throws her a gentle smile back over his shoulder, before disappearing into his bedroom along the landing.

"Your father's in the kitchen," Jackie comments, and Rose turns back just in time to see Pete appear in the doorway, Tony in his arms.

"That's what she thinks," he replies drily, talking to his son and waving a plastic toy in his face.

Jackie huffs and goes over to take Tony from her husband. She murmurs something quietly, and Rose gets the distinct impression he's being told off for not having talked to her properly since she got back. Pete nods and Jackie disappears through the doorway, leaving the two of them alone.

The atmosphere is strange, stretched, like it's hungry for sustenance.

"So," Rose says cheerily, not having anywhere else to go.

"So," Pete echoes, smiling, but the smile looks false.

"Good day at work?"

It's always easy to ask about work because she knows that he hates it. Being the manager of Torchwood takes its toll: it makes you a harder person because of what you see every day and it makes you feel you're the only one who can help. Rose knows those feelings well.

It's strange, standing in this hallway making small-talk, mostly because it's something she doesn't do that often, and certainly never under these circumstances. When she was first here, Pete was kind enough to put both her and her mother up, but since then Rose has moved out and made her own life.

She spends a lot of time here; she has a younger brother she loves to bits and a mum and dad who need her, but she's never needed them before. Not like this.

Rose finds herself looking apprehensively up to the Doctor's room, unable to keep the pang of his loss out of her heart.

"Tell me, how does this work?" Pete asks, and he's standing a lot closer than he was a few moments ago. His face looks pained, like it's a question he knows she doesn't want to hear.

"I... I dunno," she admits, wrapping her arms around herself. "He's... There are, sort of, two of him."

"Yeah, Jacks said." His voice is quick, sharp, and Rose idly wonders if Jackie put him up to this.

"He's part human," she goes on after a breath, like she's giving a report on a Torchwood Fact File. "Not both of him, just this one. And... he's kind of the same, but he doesn't have the TARDIS or anything. It's a bit..."

"Weird?" Pete offers, and she smiles thankfully in response. "And he's... staying?"

Rose nods, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. "Yeah." She laughs with a tint of irony. "He's stuck here like me."

Her dad gives her a look of sympathy; he's just about to say something else when a small bell sounds from the dining room, signifying the start of dinner. Rose often forgets the different lifestyle up here, with servants and grand halls and plush carpets. She's pleased to remember her little flat a couple of miles away.

"I'll just go get him," she says quietly, and Pete nods as she goes over to the staircase.

"Rose, love?"

She pauses, her hand on the banister and a foot on the stair. "Yeah?"

His footsteps are soft behind her as he approaches, and she looks back over her shoulder. Pete stops just short of her, and reaches out a hand to touch her arm.

"Give him time," he advises. "Give both of you time. It'll happen on its own."

She meets eyes with this man, the man who's cool on his exterior but has a heart of gold, and she recognises something swirling in his eyes. It dawns on her that he's been through what she's going through, that he lost the woman he loved and managed to love another.

On impulse, she leans up and kisses him briefly on the cheek. "Thanks, Dad," she says, and goes upstairs.

-I-

He's in his room, shopping bags spread out all over the floor and clothes strewn haphazardly across the bed. She stops in the open doorway, watching with amusement as he frowns at the mirror, presumably due to the shirt he's trying on.

"Rose," he asks without looking up, his frown deepening, "yea or nay? It looked good earlier, but..." He turns and squints up at the light fixture in the middle of the room. "Maybe it's just here, what do you think?"

She has to bite down her smile, but it sneaks out into the corners of her mouth. He glances at her.

"What?"

She shakes her head laughingly. "Nothing."

"Really, what?" he persists, throwing the coat hanger back onto the bed.

Rose smiles softly at him, a strange tenderness towards this man overwhelming her, like she's suddenly been charmed. "Dinner's ready," she informs in a tone with the edges filed.

"Oh." The Doctor frowns, turning back to the mirror. He sighs melodramatically. "I really can't decide."

Rolling her eyes with mock impatience, Rose comes further into the room, studying the garments laid messily out on the bed. There's the shirt she advised for him, plain white, and a pair of trousers that look uncannily like what she remembers him in. She considers the clothes, noting, too, the bright, blue jacket slung over the back of the chair by the dresser.

"These," she says decisively, patting the trousers so new they still have the label on them.

She looks up and catches the Doctor smiling fondly at her. He steps forward, next to her.

"Yes, I'd decided on those," he says quietly, his gaze concentrated on her rather than the fabric between her fingers. There's something of a smile in his voice, almost like he's gently mocking her.

"And, well, I guess this," she adds, hurriedly grabbing for the first shirt she comes across just to avoid his gaze. There's something intense in it, even now, that she's not sure she wants to deal with it just yet.

He reaches across for the shirt, and with a glance, Rose realises it's the same shirt he's been wearing all day. Watching her with a calculating look, the Doctor bunches the shirt up in his hands and takes it over to the washing basket in the corner of the bedroom.

He meets eyes with her and something dark flickers within them. Rose swallows.

"Look, Rose – "

Whatever he's about to say is broken by the shrill call of Rose's name up the stairs, and she tries not to smile at he mother's impeccable timing.

She jerks her head towards the door. "We'd better go. Mum doesn't like to keep food waiting."

The Doctor snorts, and even Rose can't fight off a smile.

"I'll manage," he says by way of a peace offering, indicating the clothes everywhere. "You go down."

She nods, accepting, but just as she's at the door she hesitates.

"Don't... don't go anywhere," she says, looking briefly back over her shoulder to find the Doctor pulling at the sleeve of the new shirt he's wearing.

He looks up, surprised. Rose doesn't listen to whatever reply he may have to give. Instead she leaves and makes her way downstairs, following the scents of food as they envelop her like and inviting hug. By the time the Doctor finally comes downstairs (in a pale shirt and patterned tie), they've already dished up his servings of meat, vegetables, and gravy.

The dining room is a large, grand affair, with a long table and high armchairs and staff at every beck and call. Rose is never sure if she likes this kind of life, and it's strange sitting at a table where your nearest relative is at least two metres away, but it does – she reflects – offer plenty of arm space, at least.

Dinner is conducted with the clatter of knives and forks, a few glasses of wine, mumbled chatter (mostly between Jackie and Pete and, occasionally, Rose) and some soft music in the background.

Eventually, once all the plates have been cleared away and everyone decides they're full, they all scoot down to one end of the table to share out the last of the wine. The servants have long since been dismissed, and Tony is safely tucked up in bed, leaving the four of them much to their own devices.

Rose observes the Doctor top Jackie's glass up with yet more wine as he gives her a charming smile and recounts a tale on Nexis V wherein he very nearly lost his head.

"I dunno, might have been for the better," Jackie teases humorously, causing the Doctor to launch into more incredible tales and Rose gets the distinct impression he's trying to win her over.

She and Pete meet eyes from across the table, and it's not long before Rose excuses herself to the loo. She's no intention of going there, apart from to maybe wash her hands, but somehow listening to fantastic stories of a life she doesn't live any more (thought still very much wants to) is only something she can do for so long, especially when she's spent the better part of two days staring into the face of a man who, once upon a time, shared that life with her.

She ends up on the balcony outside, the marble cool beneath her bare arms as moonlight bathes her in reflected light. She bows her head, letting the wind play with a few wayward strands, and sighs into the cold night air, her breath condensing around her like mysterious mist.

Gradually, she hears footsteps approach, hears the crunch of shoes on the stone floor behind her. She turns, expecting the Doctor.

It's Pete.

"Hi, love," he says with a smile, and she returns the gesture. He hovers. "Mind if I join you? It's getting a bit... overcrowded in there."

Rose laughs weakly and shuffles along to give Pete room to scooch in next to her. They stand in silence for a few minutes, Rose gazing down to the pool she and the Doctor were standing by earlier and imagining what he would look like standing there now, the moonlight bright white against his skin.

There's a rustling from her right and when she looks, she's surprised to see her dad rolling a cigarette.

"You don't – " she starts, but he cuts her off.

"Special occasions." He stands back and lifts the white stick to his mouth, before clicking on a lighter and letting the end fade to embers. He takes a drag and blows it out in the opposite direction, away from Rose, and she doesn't take her eyes off him once. "Like I said," he explains after another drag. "Crowded in there."

Rose nods mutely, unsure whether or not she's surprised.

He evidently can't escape the fact her gaze is on him so, after a quick look around the gardens, he turns to her, offering her the cigarette in a simple hand gesture.

Rose hesitates. Then, meeting eyes with him and seeing cool acceptance, she plucks it from his fingers and raises it to her own lips, taking in great gulps of smoke and pushing them down into her lungs. It's been a long time since she's smoked, but even now, years later, there's nothing that can quite match the instant calming effect it has on her whole body.

"Thanks," she says gruffly, handing it back, and Pete nods.

They fall into silence again, father and daughter who have only known each other just longer than two years. And suddenly, Rose can't take it any more. Her frustration bubbles up out of her in an aggravated groan, and she flings her hands down to her sides.

"I don't know how you do it," she admits with a hard edge, conscious of keeping her voice low lest they be overheard.

Pete looks up, a surprised expression stealing his face. "Do what?"

"With Mum," Rose clarifies, waving a hand in the direction of the door. "I mean, doesn't it bother you? She's a different woman."

"I know," Pete sighs, dropping his head. "Believe me, love, I know. I still feel guilty about it sometimes, y'know?" He laughs nervously, then continues. "But no, it doesn't bother me. My Jackie, she died – she worse than died. And now this Jackie... I love her, yeah. As much, but in different ways. They have the same mannerisms and everything, she's still the same woman I fell in love with, she's just lived a different life." He pauses, and Rose can feel him considering her as she stares out across the lawns again. "Does that make sense?"

Slowly, Rose nods, and her dad continues.

"Look, it's like this. I loved her anyway, I couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to. Your mum, Rose, she's – she _is_ the woman I fell in love with twenty years ago. My Jackie changed; yours didn't." He reaches across to take her hand, and Rose dares a look up at him. He's looking back at her with moonlight reflected in his eyes and openness written across his features. "I'm happier now than I ever used to be, and I mean that. I love a great woman and I have a fantastic life that I'm enjoying because of that."

Rose can feel the tears well up in her eye and she swallows, trying to push them down with the rest of everything. "But he's still out there," she whispers, glancing up to the sky where the stars twinkle invitingly down at her. Not so long ago, those stars didn't even exist. "My Doctor, he's still... He's not dead. He just hasn't got me."

"Yes he has," Pete says quietly, and Rose glances at him again, frowning slightly. He chuckles, releasing her hand. "He's got you, and he wants to spend the rest of his life with you."

"Oh," she responds dully, understanding. "Yeah."

"You've got it one step easier than I ever got it, love," her dad continues, standing and stretching while he finishes off his fag. "You can mention something you did three years ago and he'll know exactly what you're talking about. Everything you did together, everything you were..." He pauses, briefly meeting eyes with her, like he isn't sure he should say what he's about to. "He's still him, Rose. Even I can see it. And I'm not saying rush into things, not at all. But give him a chance. For your sake, if not for his." He leans forward, putting a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Their gaze meets, and Rose feels such security in this man, in her father, she's suddenly so very grateful she has him. "It'll be okay. If you let it."

With that, he goes inside, leaving Rose standing alone on the balcony, the cold wind kissing goosebumps all over her skin.


	6. Six

**Author's Note**: Yes, this update took a while. I'm preparing for uni at the moment, so I'm likely to be AWOL for the next month or so. I will, however, update when I get the chance, and there's lots more of this to come, so fear not ;) In the mean time, thank you everyone who's still supporting me and enjoy chapter six!

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**A Life Well Lived**  
Six

It's late. Jackie's had so much wine she's practically falling asleep, and even the Doctor will admit he's more affected by alcohol than he once used to be. As time ticks on, he becomes increasingly aware of Rose's absence until, after her father reappears at the table smelling suspiciously of cigarette smoke, he decides he should go and look for her.

He excuses himself from the table, leaving a semi-drunken Jackie in the all too capable hands of Pete, and goes off in search of Rose. Pete nods his head towards the left and, taking that as a clue, the Doctor makes a left after he's gone up the stairs. He finds himself in another living room, grander than the one by the entrance, with a huge bookshelf stacked with books taking up one of the walls. High armchairs sit facing a quiet fire in a grate, and thin curtains twitch in a lazy breeze.

Light from the moon outside streams in and, standing on the balcony past the open French windows, he spots the familiar silhouette of Rose.

"Hello," he says quietly, sliding his hands into his pockets and stepping out into the cool night air. "You disappeared."

She glances back over her shoulder, giving him a cursory look. She doesn't say anything.

The Doctor senses his presence isn't all too welcome, but this is the second time today she's wandered off and left him on his own, and he's going to get to the bottom of it before it gets in the way of whatever progression they need to make.

He stands straight beside her, the wind taking up his hair and blowing his fringe into his eyes. The grounds spread out before him, willow trees and lakes and statues scattered here or there, and in the distance he's certain he can make out the distinct mewling of a peacock.

"It really is beautiful here," he comments quietly, turning to Rose. The light from the moon gives her a haunting complexion, but it's strangely beautiful against the shadows. "Rose?"

She nods, a small sigh escaping her lips. "Yeah, I know. After everything settled down Dad asked Mum if she wanted to move, but I s'pose living on a council estate most of your life makes you want something like this. She didn't want to leave."

"And you?" he asks, detecting something unsaid in her words and shifting closer to her. "What did you want?"

She bows her head, her hesitation making the Doctor wonder if she's grappling with the truth.

"I didn't want any of it," she admits eventually, looking up and turning her head so she can see him. "Mum was... she seemed to settle so easily and accept everything."

"And you didn't?"

"Not at first. I mean, working at Torchwood, great, yeah, but... it was nowhere near what I was really trying to make up for." She turns to him fully now, and the Doctor can't tell if her eyes are glistening because of tears or moonlight. "And you were right, about what you said before. Working there has changed me, it's made me... colder. I guess you have to be when you work somewhere like that, when you see what I see every day."

"But I see it too!" he finds himself arguing, wishing he had never compared her to Yvonne. "Rose, when you were with me... what we saw together, that didn't change you, not one bit."

"Yeah, but," she shrugs, "we weren't _working_. When I was with you I was there by choice, not 'cause I had to make a living."

"So..." He needs to get to what's really troubling her. It's good, he decides, that she's opening up to him; they're talking now in ways they never used to before.

She doesn't say anything, instead turning away, and his hand drifts to her back in comfort. "Tell me," he pleads quietly.

"I don't like it here," she says simply, quietly.

He's surprised, and his head tips to one side in interest. "You don't?"

"You're kidding me, right?" There's almost something accusing in her tone, but he can tell that she's trying to tame it. "I was _trapped_ here. I told you, a long time ago, that I was never gonna leave you, and I still stand by that. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm here because I have to be, that I've got to spend the next... sixty years or whatever as a normal person. After being out there, up in the stars, it's..." She falls quiet, as though realising she's saying things that don't deserve to be said. "It's hard to go back," she finishes.

The Doctor sighs through his nose, dropping his hand. "I see."

He'd always assumed, in his young foolish ways, that she was happier here. He knew for a fact she was better off, he remembers feeling that acutely when they said goodbye at Bad Wolf Bay. He knew that this life was a better life for her, that it was the life that she truly deserved. That didn't stop him being selfish when she tried to convince him she wanted _him_ more than any kind of normal life, and it didn't stop the hurt from stinging that little bit more when he lost her anyway.

"I thought..." he starts, trying to rationalise just letting her go. She had a point, those years ago, when she challenged him about the universes fracturing. Then, he wouldn't have dared to do such a thing to get her back. If given the same option now... he's not so sure he'd take the safe path again. "Oh, I don't know what I thought."

"It's like, when you left me before, I _knew_ there was a way back through, I just had to find it. That's why I stuck around at Torchwood, so I could find my way back to you."

"You never settled here," he realises suddenly, and the way she drops her gaze from him confirms what he's thinking. "You made do, day to day, because you thought... you could find a way back. That's what kept you going. But you haven't been living, these past couple of years, have you? You've just been... experimenting in Torchwood, punching bigger and bigger holes in the universe like – "

"And you're angry because of that?" she disputes, frowning.

"No," he lies, "I just... I wish I'd known. That... that by you being here, the universe was even more in danger."

"Oh, no." Rose pushes herself away from the balcony, away from him, and she glares at him like he's the monster she's been grappling with for the past few years. "You're not blaming me for this, for anything that happened. I didn't do anything wrong. I just did what you were too scared to."

There's a sour silence in the air once her words abate, their gaze locking in the cool night.

The Doctor can feel his clenched teeth relax, can feel his body giving up: she's right.

"Yes," he admits quietly, determinedly keeping her eye contact. "You're right. You did and said the things I was too scared to do. And Rose, you have no idea how thankful I am that you did. Because now..." He trails off, his voice becoming soft, and he steps towards her. He can see her take a breath, perhaps in nervousness, but he reaches down for her hand anyway and looks her dead in the eye. "Now, maybe, I can do and say the things I've always wanted. You've given me that, Rose, you've given me that freedom."

He watches as the words register in her mind, and already her gaze becomes softer, more open to him.

He's surprised when she reaches out to his heart, placing her fingertips over the solitary beating beneath his chest. She exhales loudly, her breath catching in the air.

"If I..." she starts, and he tightens his hold on her hand. She looks up at him. "If I accept this, it means... you're not coming back."

She sounds so lost that he has to fight, hard, to stop himself from enveloping her in a hug and kissing all the worry out of her.

"I'm here," he says instead. "And no, Rose. I'm not coming back."

She nods, understanding, then glances away from him as tears rise in her eyes. When she can't fight them, and they begin to leak from behind her eyes and dribble down her cheeks, the Doctor sighs in sympathy and pulls her to him, finding strength in her as he comforts her.

She grabs him around the shoulders, pulling at him like she can't hug him hard enough, and soon she's shaking in his arms.

He rubs her back and lays his head on hers, staring out across the grounds as it's cleansed by the light of the moon. She leaves mascara stains on his brand new shirt, but he doesn't care. He just stands with her as, finally, she mourns the loss of a man she's been trying to stay with for the past four years of her life. Perhaps now, they'll be able to start something new.

-I-

He suggests bed not long after, and she silently agrees. She lets him take her by the hand and lead her away, back through the living room, along the hallway, through another door and eventually to their adjoining rooms.

"Thanks," she says with a sniff once they're in her room, but she doesn't smile.

The Doctor stands above her, gazing at the way her features almost blur in the soft lamp-light. He sighs, then sits next to her on the bed, unsure of the feelings that have suddenly bloomed in his chest.

"Look, Rose, I know it's – "

He doesn't get to finish his sentence. When he looks up at her, she's grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him towards her, into a kiss that's searing and sends tingles right the way through him. Somewhere in his mind there's a voice that tells him she's just using him for comfort, that she's trying to escape the terrible honesty of feeling alone.

But another voice argues that he's doing exactly the same, so instead of pulling away, he kisses her back, hands moving to her back and waist to keep her close to him.

Kissing Rose feels fantastic. It's like exploring something he knows like the back of his hand, and when he feels her open her mouth against him, coaxing his tongue to slide along hers, shivers ripple down his skin. His body – his human body – seems to know how to act, which is just as well, because left to his own devices he'd probably get up and start babbling about this or that.

As it is he can settle with brushing his nose against hers, nibbling her bottom lip, moving his attention from her mouth to her jawline and feeling the intense thrill of pleasing her twitch between his legs.

Oh. Oh, God.

He pulls away from her, wondering when it was that his shirt became more unbuttoned and her hand slipped underneath it to his skin. He glances to Rose, who looks ruffled and thoroughly kissable, and has to hold in a groan. This... this is new.

Rose looks worried. "You okay?" she asks, moving her hand away to rest it in her lap.

He nods, his head slightly clouded by the pheromones he can smell rising from her skin. "I... yeah."

She frowns, but it's sympathetic. "You don't look it."

The Doctor sits back, a heavy feeling settling on his shoulders, and he absently runs a hand across his jawline. He frowns at the stubble there, thicker and coarser than it should be. His mouth still tastes of Rose, of dinner and wine and –

"Did you smoke?"

"Used to..." she says slowly, and there's something guarded in her reaction. She shrugs. "Had some when Dad found me on the balcony. I don't make a habit of it."

He nods absently, that at least explaining the extra layer of taste on his tongue. Then, breaking himself out of thought, he looks back to Rose. "You should sleep," he says. "It's late."

She laughs."Don't think you've slept since you got here. And... I don't really feel like sleeping..." Her hand slides along the bed to his and there's mischief in her gaze.

He moves his hand from her reach and stares at the closed door. "Don't," he warns.

She tenses, he can feel the slight shift of weight on the bed beside him.

"Fine," she says simply, with a slight biting edge to her tone. "I won't."

He knows he's annoyed her, but he also knows they can't jump in to anything together, it wouldn't be the sensible thing to do. They're going to have to take this slowly. The trouble is, he doesn't really know what it is he's doing.

"Goodnight, Rose," he offers simply, getting up off the bed.

He senses hesitation in the air, but she returns the gesture, and he leaves the room.

He heads through the bathroom, glancing briefly at the toothbrushes sitting in the cup by the sink. Shaking his head, the Doctor continues to his own room. It's strange, standing in here on his own, and as he gazes around the room that's been unslept in he can't help but feel a pang for his old room, the room he'll never see again.

He goes to the window and draws the curtains, looking up briefly into the night sky.

"You'll be okay," he says to himself, even though he knows that he won't. The Doctor closes his eyes, takes a moment to transport himself to his old body, the one with the TARDIS. He summons the feeling of loneliness, of standing in the control room with no one around, except his loyal ship. He misses her song, the constant thrum of another presence in his mind. In some ways he's lonelier now than he ever was, but he doesn't want to dwell on that for too long.

He has other things to worry about.

He strips down to his underwear, peeling off the brand new clothes and folding them into neat squares and placing them on the chair at the other side of the room. He tugs at the covers and slips between the sheets, ghost-like, and tries to get used to the strange feel of the mattress beneath him.

If this were a planet in the middle of nowhere and he were thrown into yet another adventure, this would be fine. It's the knowledge that he's here for the duration that unsettles him slightly. He can cope, day by day, because he can convince himself he's just here for a quick visit, and he can enjoy being with Rose and her family living in this strange, strange house when he thinks he'll be leaving soon.

But he won't be leaving soon. He needs clothes, a much bigger collection than what they bought today, and a house, and a job, and _money. _He has to, as Rose put it, live like a normal person. He'll even have to get a mortgage.

The idea in itself is somewhat terrifying, but he smiles at the memory of years ago, of the words being exchanged with Rose.

"_What about me? I'd have to get one too. I dunno, could... could be the same one, we could both...I dunno... share. Or not, you know. Whatever." _

He remembers the awkward feeling that had arisen with her words and he wishes he didn't feel it now. But his heart glows when he reminds himself that he has her, no matter what, that she's lying next door (probably not in the best of moods with him) and that she'll be there in the morning.

He tries to shake off the awkwardness, tries to see past the looming facts of being human and start accepting that this is where he's going to be for the rest of his life.

It could be worse, he reasons.

The Doctor closes his eyes, finally giving in to the pull of sleep. He drifts off easily enough, thoughts on Rose and a future he can explore with her. But it's only a couple of hours later when he wakes in a cold sweat, burning images of his dream imprinting in his mind's eye and the word 'Daleks' leaving his lips in a terrified whisper.


	7. Seven

Seven

Rose sleeps fitfully. She's too hot, too cold, feels too suffocated even in her own room. Minutes pass like hours as she dozes in and out of sleep, feeling steadily uncomfortable as the night goes on. She shouldn't have kissed him, she keeps telling herself, not like that. She should have given it more time, should have remembered that they're on a long and lonely path together. But somehow kissing him had seemed the right thing to do, no matter which Doctor he is. The fact of the matter is the Doctor would be acting like this, in all the same ways, even if he had decided to stop off for sixty years while she was still travelling with him.

He's been through more since she saw him last, but he's the same man, and he always will be. She knows that – it's why she kissed him.

And yet, despite that, he keeps telling her (and she keeps telling herself) that they're part of a completely different life now, that they have to start again. The trouble is, it's hard to start again when you both know each other so well.

Rose lies awake in the middle of the night thinking these thoughts. She dreams of different faces of the Doctor, of multiple versions of his tenth form as well as multiple versions of his ninth, and each one is telling her something different about him.

Her sleep is so light, she can't tell where one dream ends and the other begins.

She finds herself lying awake at about half past three in the morning and listening to the breeze outside her window. It's making the branches of the trees scrape against the glass like a whisper, and the wind howling almost sounds like a melancholy tune from the moon.

Rose sits up in bed, blinking and rousing her body into wakefulness. She frowns, listening hard, and after a few minutes, she's sure that it's not the wind making those haunting melodies. It's coming from the house, downstairs, in a distant room in the mansion.

She slips quietly out of bed and takes the dressing gown hanging from the back of her door. Feeling slightly nervous, she takes a breath to steady herself, then pulls open the door to her room. It creaks loudly on its hinges and she hushes it, before realising quite how silly that is. She has a sudden pang for the doors on the TARDIS, always silent unless wanted otherwise. She still misses that ship.

She tiptoes quietly down the staircase, reminded suddenly of being sixteen and sneaking out of her mum's flat to visit Jimmy. It always used to have a sense of daring romance about it and, somehow, this does too.

Rose follows the sounds of the music, recognising the notes as the piano from the drawing room at the back of the house, and as she goes through door after door she feels almost hypnotised by the way the music is speaking to her. It's coaxing her into a calm state, but she hurts, like she's just had her heart broken. Eventually, she stands in the doorway of the drawing room, eyes falling to the piano and the Doctor sat as its commander, his fingers stroking the keys like a lover, and the piano reacting to his touch.

Note after note drifts through the air and envelopes her, until she's almost crying with its beauty. The song comes to an end, finally, and the Doctor sighs, sitting back and letting his hands fall away from the keys.

Rose swallows down the lump in her throat, finding her voice. "I didn't know you could play," she says quietly, and the Doctor turns with a jump.

He looks at her for a second or two before dropping his gaze to his hands. "Took some lessons a few centuries ago. That piece was always one of my favourites."

Pulling the dressing gown tighter around herself, Rose shuffles into the room and takes a seat on the other side of the piano.

"I recognise it," she muses thoughtfully, gazing up the bookshelf at the rows and rows of music books.

The Doctor nods."Moonlight Sonata, yes. Bit of a cliché, but there we go. To this day it remains one of my favourite piano movements."

Rose smiles. "You're good at it. Good at playing, I mean."

"Thank you."

Silence gathers over them like the beginning of rainclouds, but Rose has so many more questions she wants to ask this man. The only light in the room is coming from the window, from the bright moonlight outside, and the ghost of the Doctor's playing still hangs in the air around them. Rose feels like she's been transported to a magical place, somewhere far away from everything and everyone, where she and the Doctor can just be. She's reminded painfully of the TARDIS.

"Did you...? Um, could the old you – " She motions towards the piano.

The Doctor chuckles softly. "Regeneration isn't like being reborn with a whole new range of skills. I learn as I go. If I learn it once, I've learned it for life. Well. Unless I forget, which is always possible, I suppose."

"Oh."

Their gazes meet across the top of the piano, their shadowed faces reflected in the surface of the wood.

Rose can see the Doctor hesitating, notices the way his shoulders tense ever so slightly.

"That wasn't what you meant, was it?" he asks. "You meant... the other me, the me I split apart from."

Slowly, Rose nods, and licks her lip in her nervousness.

"The same point stands," he clarifies, looking down to the carpet with a sigh on the edge of his voice. "I could play just as well then as I do now."

Rose glances down to her nails, fiddling with them as she tries to keep persistent questions out of her mind. It's strange being with the Doctor on her ground rather than his. In the TARDIS she could ask him anything she liked, they could do anything they liked, because a small part of her always knew the Doctor was in control and that they would remain safe. Now it's her turn to be that figure for him, but she's not so sure she can manage it.

In a weird form of role-reversal, Rose tries to imagine what the Doctor might say if he found her playing the piano in the TARDIS in the middle of the night (never minding the fact that she can't even play the piano). She imagines him appearing in the doorway and watching her with a kind of pensive quietness, and awe in his eyes. Then she realises that for her to be doing what the Doctor did tonight would mean that there was something wrong.

Which means there's something wrong for the Doctor.

"Have you slept?" she asks, trying to be casual and knowing that it sounds anything but.

"Um..." He pauses, and Rose gets the distinct impression he's trying to figure out whether he should lie or not. "A bit," he seems to settle on.

"How long is a bit?"

The Doctor shrugs off her question. "An hour or so. I don't need much sleep," he jokes, but Rose doesn't smile

Her gaze drifts across his face, from the hollows of his eyes to the sunken structure of his cheekbones. Coarse stubble peeks out all over his jawline and, as her eyes meet his again, she notices just how weary and tired they really are.

"You look like you do," she comments quietly, and the Doctor sighs.

"I'm fine," he persists, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Really, Rose. I am."

"So I s'pose you always sit up in the middle of the night playing sad music, yeah?"

"It's... what I wanted to do!" he argues, but she can tell from the frustration in his voice that he's trying to hide something from her. "Can we not talk about this now?"

"Doctor," Rose says gently, but firmly, "We're not going to get anywhere if you don't tell me anything. It's all very well trying out this new life, but if... if we start hiding stuff from each other, we may as well not bother."

She knows that if there's really nothing wrong, this is the point where he will insist that he's fine. But he hesitates, and it's that whicb gives him away. Rose waits patiently, gazing at him until he looks up at her, his barriers crumbled.

"I can't even close my eyes," he hisses into the quiet darkness. "Every time I do, they're – " He breaks off from his sentence, swallowing, and he sighs heavily through his nose. A kind of sympathy she hasn't felt in years begins to creep over Rose, and she has to stop herself from getting up and enveloping him in a hug. Somehow, hugging does not feel like the right thing to do.

"Who?" she asks instead.

He meets her gaze, and for the first time since he's been here, there's a strange, cold glare in his eyes. "Who do you think?" he challenges. Rose pauses, having her suspicions but hoping that she's wrong. "Daleks."

She bites her bottom lip, not quite sure what to say. She can't even act surprised, because it's something she's suspected ever since the other him pointed out he'd committed genocide.

"And what are they... doing?" she asks carefully, not wanting to ask or say the wrong thing. She remembers the old him, the leather jacket clad figure of icy fire, the man who never shied away from anything except anything personal.

The Doctor seems to fall into a state of empty thought, and his voice is hollow when he speaks. "Nothing," he says blankly. "They're just there. Looking at me. And then... then they're screaming, and then..."

"Then?" Rose prompts quietly after a moment or two.

He looks up at her wearily. "I dreamt I became one, Rose, that I was one. And that I murdered them all because – because I had to."

She frowns in sympathy, wondering just how vivid his dreams are. Not long after she was trapped here, Rose continued to have dreams of the Doctor. She dreamt he was in trouble and that she couldn't save him in time, that he was calling to her and she couldn't get to him, that every moment of his life was spent in one form of misery or another and she had to sit back and watch it happen.

There had been better dreams, too, where he approached her and they talked for hours, or he comforted her when she was feeling particularly low.

But Rose had never slaughtered an entire race before, much less two, so now she can only imagine what it must be like to have the faces of the people and creatures you kill staring back coldly at you out of an abyss of darkness.

"That's horrible," she breathes, trying and failing to imagine an accusatory Cyberman in her mind's eye.

"Yes. It is."

"And that's – " Her gaze darts to him. "That's why you haven't been sleeping?"

The Doctor reaches his hands up, burying his face in his palms. "I haven't been tired until recently, but... yes, it's why. I just, I can't. I can't possibly get any restful sleep when I've got their voices in my head, telling me about the man I am, the man I _really_ am. When I've got their voices pleading for mercy from me."

Rose folds her hands between her knees, looking down to the shadows on the floor. "I guess... this is what you were going through before. When we first met."

"Something like." The Doctor laughs darkly, and leans forward onto the piano. "It was easier then. I didn't need to sleep. And, well... I had you." He smiles at her. "I still have you. Always have, I suppose."

Rose smiles with him. Then, without quite knowing why, she gets to her feet and moves around to the Doctor's side of the piano, holding out her hand. He remains seated a moment, looking up at her with an almost painfully open expression on his face. Taking her hand, he admits defeatedly, "It's too much."

Rose nods sagely, feeling suddenly like she's the one who's lived nine hundred years. "Doctor, I'm gonna tell you something." She motions for him to move over on the piano stool, and he does, allowing her space to sit next to him. There isn't much room and when she looks at him, she's only inches away from his face and their clasped hands are pressed into her lap. "When I lived in the TARDIS we saw a lot of time and space. Some nice stuff, some not so nice stuff, and some of it was just plain nasty. I used to think it was too much for me, too."

She expects him to say something, but he doesn't. He just sits there blinking patiently back at her.

"But then... I'd walk in on you fiddling with something in the console room, and you'd start babbling away like nothing could bring you down. Or I'd find you in the library and you'd make me a cup of tea, and we'd have a nice chat about nothing very much. Even just having a meal with you was nice sometimes." Even after these couple of years, Rose can feel her cheeks warm up from the blush that's burning them. She remembers how she used to feel, how a part of her still feels, the girlish naivety of stealing a few stolen moments with a man you love.

"Anyway," she continues hurriedly, not wanting to go into the details of the past, "the thing is, all those times I ever felt I couldn't do it, that I was leaving too much behind and wasn't good enough for the life we led, or for you even... I just forgot it all when you took care of me. And I know, you're gonna say you weren't really taking care of me, but you were. You were giving me exactly what I needed." She takes a breath, steadying her nerves. "And now I can do the same for you. I think. What I mean is – "

The rest of her sentence is swallowed up by the Doctor's kiss. It's strange, and completely out of the blue, but one second she's trying to tell him she'll be there for him when he needs her, and the next he's leaning towards her and stealing her mouth in an open kiss. The hand that's not held in hers drifts up to her jaw, angling her head closer towards him and deepening their kiss. Rose doesn't hesitate in kissing him back, or in teasing his tongue into her mouth. When she lets go of his hand it moves to her waist, pulling her closer to him while his other starts to tangle in her hair.

He pulls back from her, looking breathless and youthful, and like he's not sure he meant to do what he just did.

Rose licks her lips slightly, smiling nervously. "We've gotta stop doing that," she laughs, and the Doctor 'mmm's in agreement. Then he frowns.

"Actually, no," he counters. "I think – I think it's very good. Kissing. I mean, it's certainly..."

"Hot?" Rose suggests coyly.

"Well, I was going to say therapeutic, but, yes... Hot will – hot will do."

She giggles, the nervousness getting a hold of her, and when she looks up at the Doctor she can tell he's trying very hard not to giggle with her.

"It's just, it's so hard," Rose complains through a laugh after a few moments have passed.

The Doctor raises an eyebrow. "Speak for yourself," he says, and she hits him.

"No, I mean... this. What we're doing, or trying to do. We can try and pretend there's a right way to do this, but at the end of the day I'm pretty sure we're the only people who're gonna go through this. And that means there is no right way, we're just guessing."

"Yes..." the Doctor agrees thoughtfully. "It's hard to know. It's been a few years since... well, since we travelled together. But I haven't – my feelings haven't changed for you, Rose. I thought they would, and part of me even hoped they would, but... they haven't. I still – I'm still just as in love with you now as I ever was."

He looks down shyly, like he's just let a lot of words come tumbling from his mouth that he couldn't control.

"So yes," he finishes with a cough. "It's difficult."

Rose considers him, fondness for him blossoming her heart. "I know we're taking things slow. But, I guess we've gotta just go with what feels right. Otherwise we'll be stuck forever."

The Doctor looks up again, meeting her eye, and moonlight falls across his face, making his eyes sparkle.

"I know what feels right," he says, and his hand finds hers.

She nods, accepting and agreeing, and before she knows it she's getting to her feet again, leading the Doctor out of the room.

The grandfather clock in the next room reads an ungodly time in the morning, and Rose prays she won't be woken early by her younger brother, or worse still, her mother. Perhaps she'll slide the lock along on the bedroom door.

They creep back upstairs together, hand in hand, and after Rose locks her door she turns to find the Doctor unbuttoning his shirt. She slips out of her dressing gown, thankful that she decided to wear pyjamas while she stays here, and pulls back the covers of the double bed. She slides easily between the warm covers and, shortly afterwards, the bed sinks slightly as the Doctor climbs in beside her.

Nothing's been said, nothing's been agreed, but somehow Rose knows that after tonight, things will be different. Part of her almost wishes the Doctor hadn't got undressed, even if it's only to his underwear – she's never seen him in anything less than his shirt, but she can't expect him to sleep comfortably in restricting clothes. Perhaps, she thinks, she'll try and convince him into pyjamas.

She lies on her side, facing him, and he does the same to her. His eyes are open and the covers move around him while he breathes. Rose suddenly realises it's been a few long years since she's shared a bed with anyone else.

Without words, the Doctor moves his hand to her waist, resting it just on the dip of her hipbone. Rose tries to ignore the feel of his hand, the way his fingers are all but burning through the fabric of her pyjamas, and thankfully she realises how tired she is.

The Doctor's other hand rests on the pillow in front of him, and Rose reaches for it, enjoying the way his fingers toy with hers.

"Think you'll be able to sleep?" she asks through a persistent yawn, her eyes so tired they're beginning to ache.

The Doctor nods. "I should think so. You look like you'll have no trouble."

Rose smiles lazily. "Been quite a day."

"Been quite a week. Give or take."

Suddenly Rose has a thought, and her fingers tighten around the Doctor's. "You know I'm here, yeah? If you need to, I dunno, talk or something, or even sit and do nothing. I know it can't be easy in your head right now, but if you know there's someone here to – "

"If you don't shut up, I'm going to kiss you again," the Doctor growls good-naturedly, his eyes closed. He opens one and looks at her, then smiles. "And yes, I know. Thank you."

After a few moments Rose feels her eyes drooping, and she snuggles further into the sheets, closer to the Doctor, and drifts quietly off to sleep: but not before the Doctor, who – for the first time since he can properly remember – sleeps without wanton dreams to disturb him.


	8. Eight

Eight

They're awoken in the morning not by Tony but, alas, by one Jackie Tyler.

"You died in there, or what?" her voice calls, penetrating, through the wood after she's knocked twenty-seven times.

The Doctor, not used to waking up quite like this, groans and turns over, burying his head in the pillow like an animal burrowing from cold winter air. His eyes are closed and darkness surrounds him, but he hears Rose call back to her mum and suddenly he's awake, remembering. Jackie's slippered footsteps pad away, her voice grumbling as she goes, and the Doctor raises his head from the warmth and comfort of the pillow to stare blearily around the room.

"Morning, sleepy-head," Rose teases from his side, and he sighs with happiness, his head flopping back onto the pillow.

He makes a sound that's supposed to be 'hello', but it comes out more like he's being strangled. He stretches, arching his arms up and pushing his toes right out, and when he relaxes again it's with a loud, satisfied groan.

"God, that feels good," he drawls lazily, enjoying the way his entire body tingles from feeling rested. "I'd forgotten about sleep."

He can feel Rose's eyes on him and, turning, he looks blankly at her.

"You'd 'forgotten' sleep?" she asks, sounding very nearly appalled.

He shifts onto his side, so he can see her better. The light from the window filters in gently, and the frizz from her hair breaks the beams of sunlight like a strange aura. He smiles.

"Well, sort of. I'm used to it for necessity's sake. Doing it for fun is... new."

She snorts. "Not _really_ for fun," she says, settling down beside him again. "I mean, it's for necessity now, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

He can't help smiling at her, feeling so refreshed and awake and alive that it's almost unbelievable. He sighs again, closing his eyes, tempted by the pull of sleep again.

"Oh, no you don't," orders Rose, and – to his utter, if sleepy, dismay – she tugs on his nose. "Mum's awake, she'll have breakfast cooking."

His eyes shoot open immediately, any retort he might have thought of leaving his mind. "Breakfast?" he asks hopefully. "There's breakfast?"

Rose laughs. "Yeah, like there was yesterday."

"I thought that was... I don't know, special," he says. "There's breakfast every day? That I don't have to make?"

She hits him playfully on the arm. "You never made it anyway," she teases.

"Not true." He pouts. "I distinctly remember waking you up with breakfast. A lot of times."

"Only because you wanted something."

"Not _just_ because I wanted something, you weren't just a convenience, you know."

She shakes her head laughingly. "You can say that now 'cause you're stuck with me for life."

"I was stuck with you anyway," he mutters, the sense of teasing never leaving his voice. "Need I remind you of when you chose me over your entire family?"

Rose flings the covers off and sits up, stretching. "Don't know what I was thinking." She smirks, her tongue resting cheekily between her teeth as she gives him a side-on glance. "Musta been crazy in my youth."

"Oh, that's rich," he retorts jokingly as she gets up off the bed, heading towards the bathroom. Without quite meaning to, he reaches out a hand to her, brushing her leg as she walks by. She stops, looking down at him expectantly.

He shakes his head, confused at his own actions, and Rose rolls her eyes and smiles. Then she heads into the bathroom to get up.

The Doctor dresses quickly, only slightly embarrassed to realise that he took most of his clothes off the night before. He hadn't really thought about it, it just seemed the natural thing to do. Even now, doing up his belt and buttoning up his shirt, feels strange to him. He's not used to such a routine.

He joins Rose in the bathroom, reaching for a toothbrush to clean his teeth. He makes a comment about nonsensical human traditions, and she laughs at him, running a finger along his jaw.

"You need to shave," she says, and looking into the mirror, he agrees. He's not used to the hair there growing so quickly, or his eyes looking so tired, or his skin looking so worn.

"Blimey," he comments, shocked. "Looks like I've aged a hundred years overnight."

"Don't say that," Rose warns carefully. "Might come true."

She leaves him to stare at himself in the mirror some more, but is only gone a few minutes. When she enters the bathroom again, it's with armfuls of shaving products, and a razor with a sharp blade.

"Old fashioned way, I'm afraid," she sighs, dumping them all over the counter. The shaving cream topples over and rolls onto the floor, and both of them stoop to pick it up.

"I've got it," the Doctor says softly, looking up and meeting eyes with Rose. She doesn't say anything, just looks at him, and he starts feeling the urge to want to kiss her again. But, instead, he clears his throat, and lifts the shaving foam to the counter-top. She tells him they're her dad's things, so they'll need to be given back, but they'll probably be able to find products for the Doctor in town.

"More shopping?" he complains, but he supposes shopping is a lengthy sacrifice he's going to have to make. He's, dare he admit, 'domestic' now. No gallivanting off into the far reaches of the future, or indeed the past.

Rose just pulls a 'you should know better' face at him and leaves him to the shaving equipment. He prefers this to electric razors, if he's honest: there's something soothing about swiping the cool metal across his chin, scraping reckless hair up in a blizzard of foam.

It doesn't take him long to polish off the smattering of hair speckled along his jawline, and he's careful to keep the line of his sideburns straight, as always. He likes his sideburns, he'd feel naked without them.

Smoothing a hand over his skin with an air of triumph, the Doctor considers the accoutrements before him and frowns. He'll need his own, yes, but for now he isn't quite sure what to do with these. Leave them here would be best, perhaps, and ask Rose later.

He pops along to the bedroom, his own bedroom, in search of the clothes they bought the day before. He changes quickly, slipping out of his old suit and depositing it on the bed. Doing up the buttons of the jacket of his new one – a dark grey affair, pinstriped, of course – he glances to the blue, crumpled material in a small pile on the bedcovers.

He pauses, feeling a strange pang he can't explain. It feels like shedding skin, as though by leaving the suit behind he's abandoning a part of himself. He doesn't like to think about that, so without another thought, he steps out of the room and trots down the stairs.

Breakfast reaches his nose and tickles his stomach, the accompanying growl evidence in itself of how hungry he is. Rose is already here, as is Jackie, Pete and Tony. The small table is laid out with four-point-five places (Tony hardly counts as a 'one', does he?) and, as the Doctor seats himself beside Rose, his mind wanders to the strange set-up the Tylers evidently have here. Dinner seems to be cooked and served by the staff, but twice now he's been in this kitchen for breakfast, and it's a true family affair: Jackie cooks, Pete hovers and offers tea, coffee, orange juice, minds Tony. The babble of family chatter fills the room, and the Doctor – for once – sits back and listens, feeling his knowledge about Quatra Partam V and other such may not be appreciated in the conversation, even at appropriate junctures.

Pete's pouring him some orange juice as Jackie turns, spatula in hand, and catches his eye. He takes a swig from the glass, feeling like he's done something wrong, and blinks innocently up at her. She shakes her head, then reaches over to the kitchen counter for a piece of paper and throws it down in front of him.

"You two certainly caught someone's eye," she says off-handedly, going back to frying the eggs.

The Doctor frowns, glancing to the newspaper she's just put down. TYLER TOYS WITH MYSTERY MAN shouts the headline in large, bold letters, and there's a picture of he and Rose outside one of the clothes shops they visited the day before. She's pulling him by the hands, enticing him onwards, and it feels wrong for someone else to have caught this moment between them.

Frowning still, he reaches inside his jacket for his glasses – only to discover they aren't there. Aside from the fact it's a new jacket, he's going to have to get used to pockets that aren't bigger on the inside.

"Good Lord," he exclaims, squinting. "That's – that's Rose and me." He looks up, somewhat bewildered. "Why are they interested in us? In you?"

He aims the last question to Rose, who smiles and glances to the tablemat. She shrugs. "Heir of the Tyler heritage," she explains, not quite looking at him. "Goes with being his orphaned daughter."

"Orphaned daughter?" he echoes.

"Had to think of something to come up with once I was stuck here." She looks up, shaking hair out of her eyes. "I was given up at birth, but my foster parents were killed, and I'm now reunited with my proper family."

The Doctor's eyebrow quirks slightly with amusement. "Is that so?"

"You betcha." Rose grins, and he reaches over to take her hand.

"Bloody Paparazzi," Jackie mutters above the noise of sausages frying in the pan. "I can't even go to the supermarket without someone snapping a pic. 'Ooh, look at this, Jackie Tyler is doing her shopping! She's human! Let's alert the media!'."

She shakes her head, and the Doctor snorts quietly to himself. Pete looks up and smirks with him.

He feels Rose tug on his hand, and he leans over to her.

"See you changed," she comments quietly, and she casts an eye over the new suit.

"And the verdict is..."

She smiles. "Suits you. No pun intended."

He nods with satisfaction, sitting back in the chair. It's important for Rose to be as comfortable with him as he is – although at the moment, he's not as comfortable as all that. He likes being here, with her family, but he can't escape the growing nag that something in his life is very much missing.

Jackie clears the newspaper away and loads sausages, eggs, bacon, beans, tomatoes and many other breakfast-y type things onto his plate. He's almost ashamed when he comes out with the biggest pile of food, but as he dollops ketchup onto the side of the fried mound, he can't really complain. It's truly one of the most glorious things he's ever tasted, and he makes a keen point of telling Jackie so. She smiles embarrassedly at the compliment, spooning some beans up into a teaspoon and making the sound of an aeroplane in Tony's direction.

The Doctor watches, fascinated, at the mother he's never quite seen her to be. He briefly wonders what Rose would look like, sitting at the table with her son (_their_ son?) and his stomach lurches. He puts it down to eating so quickly.

Breakfast conversation is polite but inconsequential. The Doctor mostly speaks when he's addressed, preferring to go back for seconds and even thirds of whatever food is still going. After breakfast, Rose suggests he offers to help wash up. He does, nervously, with the air of a man who's trying to impress one's parents in law.

Jackie just laughs and leans over to ruffle his hair, leaving him to look appalled. Pete says the staff do the washing up, it's what they're paid for, but thank you very much for the offer nonetheless. He has no problem, when told, of the Doctor borrowing his shaving supplies, and by the look of him he even tries not to laugh.

Eventually, once everything is said and done, the Doctor and Rose stand from the table in unison, excusing themselves politely. They pause in the foyer, Rose a hand on the banister, the Doctor staring towards the front door, getting the sudden, inconceivable notion that he wants to break away from this house and run very far indeed.

"Doctor?"

He shakes his head and turns to her, smiles gently. "It's so strange here," he murmurs, approaching her. She's a step up, slightly above him, and she looks down with a thoughtful expression.

"I thought that," she says at last, dropping her gaze. "At first. Took me a long time to realise I was stuck here."

He tilts his head. "Ah, but you weren't, were you? You set about working on that dimensional canon almost immediately, I'll bet."

"Yeah, but," she flicks some hair out of her eyes, "I had to accept I was stuck here first, before I could think of ways to escape."

The Doctor nods. "I suppose you did." Silence hovers between them. "I think I'm... going to go for a walk."

"Okay," Rose says quickly, nodding. "Yeah, that's fine."

"Okay."

Neither of them move, however, and their eyes meet briefly. It's strange, he considers, this awkwardness between them now. Their relationship is on tenterhooks at the minute, neither of them knowing quite what to do with the other. It's amicable, whatever it is between them, but it's fluctuating and inconsistent, and right now he needs something stable.

He misses the TARDIS.

This life here, the life he's only been conducting for a couple of days, he likes it – he really does – but it's a bit like going on holiday and never going home. It's all wonder and adventure and making a few mistakes, but always, _always_ the best thing about going anywhere is returning to normality afterwards, whatever that may entail.

And it may take months, even years, before this feels like normality.

He's got Rose, he supposes: but even she's changed enough that he's going to have to get used to her again.

"Want company?" she asks suddenly, breaking through his cascading thoughts. She's looking nervous, almost young, like she used to when they were travelling together and she had to ask something she didn't want to ask.

He blinks. This is her ground, not his. He doesn't _know_ anything, not even whether he wants a walk on his own or not. Where would he go? He doesn't have any instincts drawing him back to the TARDIS, not here. He surely can't simply go a-wandering without consequences.

"All right," he says, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, and Rose smiles gently.

"If you want to go on your own, it's all right. I can – "

"No," he interrupts, stepping up one of the stairs and levelling with her gaze. He puts his hand on hers. "I'd like you to."

Her smile grows, in genuine happiness. "Okay. Give me a minute."

The Doctor watches as Rose trots up the stairs and disappears around the corner, leaving him with a somewhat inexplicable pang at her absence. She's the only thing he has left, now; nowhere to retreat to, nowhere to run, no aimless tasks to complete in the dead of night while she's asleep. He's no longer teaching her about the world he lives in: she's teaching him about hers.

_The one adventure I could never have..._

Except he could have, of course, he thinks to himself bitterly as he turns towards the front door. If he had really and truly wanted a life like this, with Rose, it would have been easy enough to touchdown and do it. But then... that wasn't why she was with him; and it wasn't why he had taken her with him. It just wasn't them, full stop.

He shakes his head, trying to relieve himself of such thoughts. He can't keep thinking about the what-ifs and the maybes. He's here, now, and that is all that matters. He knows they'll settle down eventually, that they'll find some sort of happiness their new life will give them. He wouldn't have left himself here if he hadn't known that.

He paces the hall foyer, his footsteps growing slightly more impatient with every passing second. Having set his mind on wanting a walk he wants go _now_, and Rose has been at least five minutes doing... whatever she's doing upstairs. He stops and stares upwards, feeling pulled in two directions: investigate her actions or leave without her.

He hates feeling irrational. Without the part of his Time Lord consciousness that's entirely logically based, he's a lot more prone to emotional outbursts. When they were on the beach and he was staring himself in the eye, silently daring him – the real him – to say to Rose the words he never would, he had felt angry. It was anger that made him want to prove himself to Rose. She was worth everything he could give her, as well as everything he couldn't, and let him be damned if he wasn't going to make himself jealous with his own bravery.

That was why he did it.

The other him had watched them, he knew, something breaking in his hearts and... and the stupid man had just stood there and watched it and left.

The Doctor sighs loudly, his shoulders drooping beneath the weight of all these thoughts. He doesn't want to think like this, this isn't him. This is... a slightly more unhinged him. Did he ever used to think this much? Of equations and times and dates and readings from his childhood, yes... but never anything that mattered.

Another five minutes go by and he can't wait any more. Though he's momentarily tempted to just open the front door and leave, the rational part of him takes control and he goes upstairs, to Rose's room.

He pauses in the doorway, stunned by the image he's met with. She's sitting on her bed, looking very small and hunched, and as the light filters in through the window it gives the room a striking yet melancholy air.

"Rose?" he asks softly, and steps in to the room.

When she looks up, the tears on her cheeks glisten in the sunlight. He feels sympathy spread across his features and he goes to her, brushing the tears away with the back of his hand.

"What – ?" he starts, but then he spots what she's clasping, desperately, in her hand. It's the TARDIS key.

She sniffs loudly and wipes her nose on her sleeve. "Sorry," she chokes, giving an embarrassed smile. "It's just... every time I think about..."

She doesn't have to say the rest: he knows.

Instead he sits next to her on the bed, taking the key gently from her fingers. He stares at it, at the sun glinting off it and refracting on to the ceiling, and he feels that need for her, too.

"I'd forgotten you still had one of these," he says through a bitter laugh, looking up to Rose again.

She plays with her fingers, trying not to look at him. "When I – when I first came here, I used to swear..." She breaks off in to another laugh at herself, lifting her gaze to the ceiling.

The Doctor turns to her more, bending his knee over the duvet cover. "Tell me," he encourages, wanting to share in the secrets she kept to herself for so long.

"I used to think it was still warm. Whenever I held it, it was always like..." She meets his gaze and her eyes are red with tears. "I knew you'd come back here, one day. Somehow. Now it's just... cold." She makes a sound that's incomprehensible, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "It's just a lump of metal."

"Oh, Rose."

Instinctively, he puts an arm around her, pulling her towards him. She falls easily enough and he kisses the top of her head earnestly, breathing heavily into her hair.

"Come on," he says, eventually sitting back and offering a smile. "Let's go for that walk."

She shakes her head. "Think I'm gonna stay here. You go, if you want."

"But." The thought of leaving her, of investigating any part of this planet without her, panics him; it would be like Rose running off the TARDIS on her own, leaving him behind.

"No, it's all right," she excuses quickly, drawing away from him. "I, y'know, I... need some space."

"Oh." He swallows. "Okay then."

He gets up quickly, sudden flashbacks of being in her bedroom on the TARDIS when he wasn't wanted seeping into his mind. It was as awkward then as it is awkward now, except more so, because on top the 'I'm not really sure where I stand' part of their friendship that went hand in hand with everything else, he's got the added weight of having nowhere to retreat to. By staying in the parallel world with her it's like admitting he loves her. Which he does, and he has, but... it still doesn't quite fit, somehow. Not yet.

"I didn't mean," Rose starts, evidently sensing that he's not quite handling things as he should be.

He backs away towards the door, obligingly. "No, no, don't worry. You're right, you need space. And, hey, I probably do as well." He pauses when he's at the threshold, his hand on the doorknob ready to pull it closed. "If you want me, I'll... be around."

Rose nods quietly, looking at him as though she isn't sure if she wants him to go or stay. He hesitates for as long as he can, waiting for her to say something. But she doesn't. And, with nothing else to do, he leaves, pulling the door quietly closed behind him. He spends the majority of the next few hours just sitting on his bed, bent over his knees, thinking.

It doesn't do him any good.


End file.
